How We Will Work

Therapeutic counselling, like life, unfolds at the sensory level and so we will work within an active listening framework, where the counselling process is underpinned by your feelings, emotions and verbal expressions. This will direct and set the pace of our work. 
In many ways, the counselling process is a journey through vulnerability. This is as true for you as it is for me, however, I have the added advantage of being professionally qualified and experienced in therapeutically managing such challenging moments.  
Talking about and working through painful feelings may bring discomfort but it is my role as your counsellor to monitor accurately your threshold of tolerance for distress. You can take comfort in the fact that I will always work with you in such a way as to not allow re-traumatisation. 

My empathic understanding, congruence and non-judgemental attitude will become even more apparent when working with you to engage and embrace your emerging self. It is at this junction (your emerging self), when active listening qualities will enable your transition to take root. 
Empathy is a crucial focus for client empowerment within the person-centred approach to counselling, not least because “the therapist role is to be the ‘midwife’ of change, not the originator” (Rogers, 1978). Besides, “the development [of the therapist] is not about learning how to counsel but about becoming a person who can counsel” (Mearns & Thorne, 2008).

I can state with certainty I have become that person who can counsel.
Peter Ryan
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Working with highly charged feelings and complex emotions, can be challenging, rewarding and transformational for both client and counsellor. "Counselling can be a vibrant experience carrying an intensity of relating which in itself is a major vehicle for therapeutic change". Many humans have lost touch with the organismic wisdom of their visceral landscape. As such, recruiting nurturing and trusting our senses is key to increasing the zest for life once again. Enhancing experience is crucial in bringing about an actualization renaissance. An empathic way of being enables clients to re-evaluate their intricate web of incongruence, alongside their emerging vitality of congruence, ensuring that the respect between known and, more importantly, unknown aspects of a journey through vulnerability, are never compromised. Empathic counsellors orientate clients towards befriending their sensory and feeling impulses because "when feelings become known to the self within the organism that processes them, feelings improve and amplify the process of managing life."
Empathic way

An empathic way of being is both, intuitive scout and intelligence officer, allowing me to roam widely and map the confused terrain, while remaining emotionally present to the "sphere of immediacy". I believe that this differentiates me from some practitioners who distance themselves, perhaps unconsciously, from vulnerable clients, when intense emotions and feelings emerge. Highly charged emotional communication has an uncanny ability to unnerve, disturb and expose the limits of therapeutic involvement. However, emotionally sourced empathy can often lead clients, especially those fear-fuelled, to therapeutic awakening.

Empathy is a non-invasive mode of engaging, which is highly respectful to clients and the darker dynamics underpinning denial processes. Establishing greater trust in my "organismic wisdom" is central to cultivating an empathic way of being, which translates into a highly inclusive form of intimate relating that evolves by honouring and maintaining differences. 
The development of a person-centred practitioner is about cultivating an empathic way of being with others. Be assured, the alignment of my natural and professional qualities via reflective practice has spawned my depth of empathic confidence. Reflective practice continues to inform, critically examine and enhance my competence in practising person-centred style. Moreover, reflective practice deepens intuitive intelligence drawn from the core of my organism while working within an ethical framework of accountability.

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