About Counselling & Psychotherapy
Discover different methods of Counselling and Psychotherapy below MethodsAttachment Centred Therapy
Attachment Centred Therapy, or ACT, is my own development. Our attachment experiences form the basis of much of our personality and how we deal with our life challenges. It predicts how we will feel about ourselves, how we function in intimate relationships, and it influences who we will choose as partners. It determines how we know to nurture ourselves, and those closest to us. It is my belief that disruptions in attachment underlay almost all addictions, personality disorders, and other dysfunctional behaviours. ACT is a combination of attachment with other powerful methods that maximises the therapeutic effect in the most efficient way possible while reprogramming the unconscious mind. The unconscious is responsible for our memories and emotions, and is where addiction and other dysfunctions originate and propagate. By reprogramming the unconscious mind, powerful and far-reaching changes can take place, allowing us to be in harmony with ourselves and other and to achieve our goals.
Helping You Heal Attachment Difficulties
Discover Psychotherapeutic Methods on offer
The psychotherapeutic methods cover the three major approaches to psychotherapy: Affective, Psychodynamic and Cognitive/Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
Attachment Centred Therapy includes:
Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy
Neuro Linguistic Programming
Time Line Therapy®
Ericksonian Hypnotherapy
Breathwork & Meditation
Dream Work
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Relationship Actualization
Couples' Therapy
Family Therapy
Effective Communication Techniques
Grief Work
Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy
Developed by Dr Albert Ellis and continued by his colleagues via the Albert Ellis Institute in New York City, Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is the original and still the best form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. REBT is a powerful tool that can be combined with meditative approaches to enhance our internal experience of the world.
Neuro Linguistic Programming
NLP is a cutting edge technology that is integrated throughout my practice. It is premised on the unconscious mind being ‘programmed’ by our experiences in childhood. These programs are beneath conscious awareness, and so, NLP is essential to reprogramming the unconscious mind. It is this reprogramming that allows and creates the new behaviours that emerge globally when Attachment Centred Therapy is effective. NLP is based on the work of Fritz Perls’ Gestalt Therapy, Milton Erickson’s hypnotherapy (Ericksonian Hypnosis), Virginia Satir’s Conjoint Family Therapy, and Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetics. Developed originally by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, NLP continues to evolve in its applications.
Time Line Therapy
Time Line Therapy is fast, powerful, and effective in getting rid of negative emotions from the past, limiting decisions, phobias, traumas, and any other “baggage” that limits our growth, our potential as human beings, and our ability to relate to others. TLT can also be used for creating the future. It was developed by Tad James, who was trained by Richard Bandler, and is an outgrowth of NLP.
Ericksonian Hypnotherapy
Ericksonian Hypnotherapy is an integral component of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and is a very useful therapy in it’s own right. The major importance is in understanding the power of words, of reframing how we see things, and the use of patterns of behaviour and also interrupting those patterns, so that we don’t just run on automatic, repeating the same old behaviours that are not getting us the outcome that we seek. Ericksonian Hypnotherapy relies on trance states, naturally or artificially induced, in order to reprogram the unconscious mind.
Breathwork & Meditation
Breathwork is the key to recalibrating the vagal system, which is the master communication nerve system between the body and the brain, particularly our life support system: the medulla. Meditation follows on from breathwork and allows us to coordinate and communicate between our conscious and our unconscious minds. Research into breathwork and meditation continues to give proof to the age-old wisdom of breathwork and meditation.
Dream Work
Freud called dreams ‘the royal road to the unconscious mind.’ This is true. Our unconscious mind communicates important information to our unconscious mind. But the royal road is not one way traffic. No, it is two way. That means that in our conscious mind’s understanding and interpretation of dreams, we are able to communicate back to the unconscious mind and give it feedback on what we want it to do and help us to achieve.
Maslow’s Modified Hierarchy
Abraham Maslow was a genius who to a positive approach to therapy. Instead of focusing on the pathology that makes people ill and unhappy to what makes people happy and helps them to function at higher and higher levels. This approach emphasises the needs that we all have as human beings, and how our needs continue to evolve and grow as we do. It looks at how each need creates a different feeling both when met and unmet, and how we go about dealing with our feelings and needs. This model of therapy, and of what motivates humans to strive for what they want or need, helps us to assess developmental deficits but also helps us to know what to do in order to work toward maximising our potential as human beings, or what Maslow called “self-actualisation”.
Relationship Actualization
Relationship Actualization is based on Maslow’s Modified Hierarchy. It essentially turns the hierarchy upside down for the forming of a relationship that begins with spiritual attraction – being attracted to the ‘spirit’ of the other persons – and proceeds to the physical level of living together, having children, and supporting one another in all the daily tasks of life. It looks at love as ‘being willing to extend yourself for the spiritual growth of yourself or someone else.’ (Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled) This model can be a guide to forming a relationship or as a guide to healing a relationship that is struggling.
Couples’ Therapy
I rely on two books and the work that went into them as the guide for couples’ therapy. The first of these is We Can Work It Out: How to Solve Conflicts, Save Your Marriage, and Strengthen Your Love for Each Other, by Clifford Notarius and Howard Markman. It describes the tactics that you can use to make your relationship work. It includes a communication primer, an REBT lite version of working with your own thoughts and feelings, and a variety of inventories and exercises. The second is The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work This book, by John Gottman and Nan Silver, is more about strategy. It is a follow on from the previous book, We Can Work It Out. Both books are based on empirical research (observation) of what actually works for couples. When using this book, I generally start with ‘The Gottman Inventory,’ which is my adaptation of the inventories in the book. If you are interested in learning more about Dr Gottman’s work, here is a link to his website: https://www.gottman.com/. You will find some useful downloads there.
Family Therapy
For Family Therapy I use the work of Alfred Adler, Adlerian Family Therapy, and also a later body of work describing Attachment Narrative Therapy. This is based on the book Systemic Therapy and Attachment Narratives: Applications in a Range of Clinical Settings, by Arlene Vetere and Rudi Dallos. Adler was one of the first, if not the first, to conceive of family functioning systemically. Vetere and Dallos have gone further, applying attachment ideas to the practice of Systemic Family Therapy.
Effective Communication Techniques
The first technique is the Couple’s Communication Model. The basis of it is the ‘I Feel… When… Because…’. This phrase describes a method of sharing feelings that is non-threatening and non-accusatory to the other party. In using this model, you take ownership of your feelings. It not only helps to avoid the other party being defensive, it also empowers you. It comes from We Can Work It Out. The other technique is the Non-Violent Communication Model based on the work of Marshall Rosenberg. Here is a link to the NVC website if you want to learn more: https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com.
Grief Work
Therapy is often a grieving process. Of course, the loss of someone we love, a relationship, a friendship, our health, and other such losses are obvious. Therapy can help with those losses. But therapy can also create an awareness of loss that wasn’t there before. When someone is far down the road with their therapy and things are getting better, they may look back on their lives and perceive how their lives would have been better is they could have grown up with secure attachment. Our unconscious mind is already aware of this loss. That is where the difficult feelings and behaviours come from that bring people into therapy, especially when we are having trouble understanding why we are having these difficulties. Bringing the reality of these losses to conscious awareness brings with it a sense of grief. This is why the grieving process is so important to understand and to incorporate into the therapy process.
Attachment Centred Therapy
John Bowlby proposed the theory of attachment as an alternative to the Freudian “drive” theory. This created a great deal of controversy within the Neo-Freudian community at the time, but today Bowlby’s ideas have become the most exciting development in psychology for a long time. Attachment style determines how we will relate to ourselves, how we will relate to others who are closest to us, our model of how the world works, and how we go about nurturing and cherishing ourselves and others. As such, it is the underlying and determining factor in how we are going to spend the rest of our lives and predicts many of the problems that we are going to encounter. Healing disorders of attachment is fundamental to healthy living.
ACT uses the Dynamic Maturational Model of attachment created by Dr Patricia Crittenden. Here is a link to her website if you want to know more: https://familyrelationsinstitute.org/
3 Basic Strategies - A, B + C
B3 or not B3, that is the question.
If you were lucky enough to have caregivers, usually parents, who helped you to feel safe, who helped you to understand your feelings and how to deal with them effectively, and how to get your needs met by interacting with others, then you are likely to be a B3. That is as good as it gets in attachment terms. Those are the folks who grow up, get married, and live happily ever after. B’s use a balance of both facts and feelings in processing information about relationships. And, they are not likely to be reading this now, because B’s are not generally going to be seeking therapy for themselves, and are much less likely to seek therapy for those close to them.
A’s on the other hand, tend to deny their own needs and feelings and are pre-occupied with meeting the needs of others. They rely primarily on facts in processing information, to the exclusion of emotional information, particularly negative emotions. If something goes wrong in relationships, they tend to blame themselves and exonerate others. In fact, some A’s will insist that they had a perfectly normal childhood, and it is only because of their own personal inadequacies that they are seeking help.
C’s tend to dismiss the needs and feelings of others and are pre-occupied with their own. They rely primarily on their own emotional state in processing information. If something goes wrong in relationships, they tend to blame the other and exonerate themselves. This keeps them stuck in a cycle of insecurity, because they fail to learn from experience, lacking the cause and effect connections that help them to understand how their behaviour is contributing to the problems they experience.
E-Therapy Advantages
- Sessions can be done from anywhere in the world, no matter your location
- Flexible scheduling so can be done at a time best suited for you
- Increases intimacy and freedom
- Allows me to provide an affordable price
- Grown in popularity due to the convenience
- Sessions can be done in an environment you find comfortable such as at home, an office, automobile or even the park
A Packet of Peas
My Packet of Peas I came up with for my clients who are having partnership difficulties to help them bring about change. The Packet of Peas are these: Preparation, Patience, Persistence, Politeness, Practice and Playfulness. Let’s look at these one at a time.
Read more about A Packet of Peas here.
What Benefits Can Be Achieved?
Clients who have engaged in this therapy many times experience a global benefit. They often improve spontaneously in areas of life that have not even been a subject of discussion in therapy. That is because the therapy aims to reprogram the unconscious mind which is where information is processed. As this change takes place, the information processing becomes more balanced, and change occurs from within. I have numerous client testimonials about the efficacy of Attachment Centred Therapy.
What Conditions Can Attachment Centred Therapy Help?
This therapy can help virtually any condition that is psychological in origin. It won’t help with problems that are biological or hereditary in nature. In addition, if someone has a condition that has been shown by research and by experience to respond to medications or some other form of treatment, then I strongly recommend that they try it. Inevitably these other therapies enhance the effect of ACT and make the healing faster.
This therapy – ACT – has evolved primarily to help people to deal with maladaptive behaviours, whether they are in the realm of addictive disorders, relationship difficulties, or mood disorders. These difficulties often emerge from trauma, abuse, and neglect that have occurred in childhood. Even well-meaning parents can inflict harm on their children who grow up to be the clients I see today.