I recognise you are an individual, with your own background, learning history, coping styles and supports. I take an individualised approach, tailoring treatment to the difficulties you are experiencing and what is maintaining them. Whilst my initial training was in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), which focuses on changing unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behavioural patterns, I have also received training in, and utilise, other evidence-based approaches as needed. These other approaches include, but are not limited to:
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which can assist you to live a life more consistent with who you want to be and what is important to you. Whilst cancer and its treatment can make this challenging, using this approach I have assisted people at varying points of their cancer journey see purpose in their life, from when they are at the start of their treatment and are limited by its effects, to when they are approaching the end of their life. In addition to identifying values, part of this treatment approach involves assisting you to respond differently to unhelpful thoughts, feelings, and urges which are getting in the way of your living a life consistent with what matters to you.
- Emotion focussed therapy, which can help you to gain a greater awareness of your own emotions and provide strategies to help you effectively cope with, regulate, and transform them. I believe an especially valuable part of this approach is the hearing of the important messages emotions are giving and being able to sit with uncomfortable feelings.
- EMDR, which can assist you to heal from the symptoms and distress that result from frightening life experiences, including those linked to their cancer journey. It was initially developed to help people with PTSD, and was found to result in relief of emotional distress, changes to negative beliefs, and reduction in physiological arousal. This approach can also be used to decrease the distress associated with future feared events, such as upcoming surgery or fear of death.
- Mindfulness therapies, which can help you increase your ability to remain in the present moment rather than focussing their attention on the past or the future. This can assist clients gain more enjoyment from pleasant situations and cope with unpleasant ones.
- Metacognitive therapy, which can be of value when thoughts have become difficult to control and are biased in unhelpful ways (such as excessively focusing on threats). Included in this approach is the identification of coping behaviours that you are currently using which may appear to be helpful in the short-term but are actually backfiring and keeping the emotional problems going. This treatment approach also assists in the development of new ways of controlling attention, new ways of relating to negative thoughts, and the modification of the beliefs that give rise to unhelpful thinking patterns.
- Compassion-focussed therapy, which can support you in being kinder towards yourself when you are struggling.
- Existential therapy, which can support you in responding to issues around death, meaninglessness, and isolation. I may use aspects of this approach to help you find meaning and purpose in your life and decrease your fear of the unknown.