Counselling

People come to counselling for many different reasons. Sometimes there is a particular problem: anxiety, a relationship that is struggling, grief, family conflict or a major change in life. At other times nothing dramatic has happened, but you may feel stuck, disconnected from yourself or aware that the same difficulties keep turning up in different forms.

Counselling gives us an opportunity to understand what is going on rather than simply trying harder to cope with it.

My approach is conversational and psychologically informed. I am interested in what you are experiencing now, but also in the patterns, relationships and experiences that may help explain why you respond to certain situations in the way that you do.

Understanding something does not automatically change it, but it often gives us more choice about what we do next.

Individual Counselling

Individual counselling can be about resolving a current difficulty, but it can also be about knowing yourself better.

Some of my work with individuals involves anxiety, stress, relationships, confidence, identity and significant changes in life. I also work with people who are functioning well but want to understand themselves at a deeper level.

This may involve exploring individuation, self-awareness, inner child work, shadow work and the parts of ourselves that we have learned to hide, suppress or manage in order to fit in, protect ourselves or meet other people’s expectations.

I do not see personal growth as becoming somebody different. More often it involves becoming more aware of who you already are, understanding the things that get in your way and learning to relate to yourself with greater honesty and compassion.

Relationship Counselling

Relationships tend to expose parts of us that do not always appear elsewhere.

Relationship counselling helps couples understand not only what they argue about, but what happens between them when things become difficult.

Attachment patterns, personality differences, family backgrounds, emotional needs and different ways of dealing with closeness, conflict or stress can all influence how two people relate.

One partner may want to talk immediately while the other needs time before they can engage. One may experience distance as rejection, while the other experiences pressure to talk as overwhelming. Neither response necessarily means that somebody does not care. The difficulty often lies in what each person comes to believe the other’s behaviour means.

Couples counselling can help slow these patterns down, improve communication and give each person a better understanding of themselves and their partner.

I work with couples at different stages of their relationships, including pre-marital counselling, parenting years, periods of conflict or disconnection, changes in intimacy, empty-nest transitions and couples who are uncertain about the future of their relationship.

Family Counselling

I approach family counselling from the understanding that a family functions as a system.

When one relationship changes, the effect is usually felt elsewhere in the family. Roles develop, alliances form, boundaries change and people find ways of coping with one another that may once have made sense but no longer work particularly well.

For that reason, I try not to begin with the assumption that one person is “the problem”.

Drawing on family systems thinking and an IFS-informed perspective, we look at what happens between family members, the roles people have taken on and the emotional responses that are being triggered within the family.

Family counselling may be useful when there is persistent conflict, difficulty communicating, separation or divorce, blended-family challenges, adolescence, adult children leaving home, ageing parents, grief or other changes that affect the family as a whole.

The work is about helping family members understand the system they are part of and finding different ways of relating within it.

Grief Counselling

Grief is most commonly associated with death, but loss can take many forms.

The end of a relationship, retirement, redundancy, changes in health, children leaving home or the loss of a future you had expected can all bring grief with them.

Grief counselling is not about finding a way to make somebody “move on”. There is no timetable that determines when grief should be finished.

Sometimes the work is simply having somewhere to speak about the person, relationship or part of life that has been lost. At other times it is about trying to understand who you are now that something important has changed.

The loss remains part of your story, but over time it does not have to occupy every part of it.

Understanding Patterns and Creating Change

One of the questions I am often interested in is not only what is happening, but why does this keep happening?

Patterns usually have a history.

Someone who avoids conflict may have learned much earlier in life that disagreement was unsafe. Someone who needs frequent reassurance may have learned that important relationships can disappear. Someone who finds it almost impossible to ask for help may have spent years being the person everybody else depends on.

Understanding where a response comes from is not about blaming childhood, parents, partners or ourselves.

It helps us recognise that there is a pattern.

And once we can see the pattern while it is happening, we have a better chance of choosing a different response.

A Space to Be Heard and Challenged

I believe counselling should be a place where you can speak openly without feeling judged. I do not, however, think that being non-judgemental means agreeing with everything you say or never challenging you.

My role is to listen carefully and try to understand your experience. It is also to notice things, ask questions and sometimes draw attention to assumptions, behaviours or patterns that may not be helping you.

Counselling works best as a collaborative process.

You know your own life better than I do. I bring counselling skills, psychological understanding and an outside perspective. Between those two things, we try to understand what is happening and what you might want to do differently.

You also do not need to arrive with a perfectly formed explanation of why you are there.

Sometimes all you know is that something needs to change.

That is enough to start with.

Counselling in Cape Town and Online Across South Africa

I offer individual counselling, relationship counselling, family counselling and grief counselling from Hout Bay, Cape Town, as well as online counselling across South Africa.

You do not need to work everything out before booking a session.

That is part of what the conversation is for.