There are many types of therapies these days such as CBT, talking therapy, somatic, EFT, EMDR, AIT, IFS, Psychedelic, Breathwork, Sound Healing, Craniosacral, Reiki, Shamanic practices and so on. They all have possible benefits and possible disadvantages. But what seems to emerge over and over again is that it is not the name of the therapy that really matters. It is very largely the space held by the therapist.

For me two of the keys to a healing outcome for the client are intention and presence. It is unfortunately incredibly rare in our society for people to be truly accepted, seen, heard, recognised and honoured, without judgement and without physical violence or sexual demands. A huge amount of the healing available from working with a therapist seems to be about the therapist truly being present for the other. Seeing, listening, holding the system in unconditional love. Allowing the other to express themselves through the mind, body and Higher Self/soul/spirit without judgment or demands.

Many of the clients I see are suffering complex PTSD and physiological symptoms, resulting from very difficult personal and ancestral stories. While these stories are real, often I am aiming to get people out of the head, out of the stories, into the body, into the energy field. Not because the stories are not true, but because the more often we keep telling these stories, the more they become embedded in the limbic attractors of the brain and the organs (dis-ease) of the body and we increasingly become these stories.

In a psychedelic assisted therapy summit webcast in 2023, Bessel van der Kolk of ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ said, Trauma means wound and leaves you wounded… The event is over, but you keep re-living it inside you… Not remembering in the body, experiencing in the body… Trauma does not get laid down in stories, it gets laid down in physiological reactions and experiences.

As many have written, the healing work is done in the shadows, not in the light! If we are going to do deep shadow work and try to widen the window of affect tolerance (see last blog), it is incredibly important that the client feels safe.

I aim to work in a space of unconditional love, so everything that arises from the shadows, no matter how painful or fearful, is welcome, because it is here to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be healed. I am here to hold the space from a place of compassion, not entanglement, judgement or fear.

Allan Schore, who came up with the term windows of affect tolerance, writes, The therapist’s ability not to dissociate from the patient’s communication of overwhelming negative affect is key here. In this heightened affect moment, will the therapist retain an empathic resonance or defensively dissociate? For the therapist to be able to stay present, they of course must have done enough of their own work to avoid being drawn into what is known as transference and counter-transference.

For you, the client, the key is an intention to change and a willingness to surrender to the process. Almost always if you are going to come to see me, I will ask you to think about your intention before you come. What do you want to change? What do you want to let go of? What limiting beliefs do you want to release?

You have to have a dream to make a dream come true.  And no matter how awful the past, it is possible for the future to be different.