Glossary

What does Person-centred Therapy mean?

Person-centred therapy means that I am client led and see my role as to help you realise your full potential, as defined by you, working at your pace.  At the heart of my practice is an intention to work in an empathic, unconditionally supportive and genuine way, and to make sure that this is communicated to you.

What does Integrative Therapy mean?

As an integrative therapist, I see individual experience and personality as composed of many ‘layers’. Calling to mind the inner rings to a tree trunk- or looking at the rain or shine logo!- offers a way of imagining this. These layers could relate to childhood experiences, familial relationships,  how you understand your identities and your relationship to society, or whether you have a faith practice, for example.  I am trained in a variety of approaches which each ‘speak’ to these layers in their own way. I draw on these flexibly according to each individual client’s needs. In this way I help clients to bring all aspects of their experience into their current awareness.

What does Relational therapy mean?

As a relational therapist, I understand my clients not as islands, but rather in terms of the relationships they have had, are having and wish to create in the future. The therapist- client relationship we have mirrors how relationships might work for you in the outside world, and through our relationship we can look to explore and repair relationships dynamics that are currently not working or have not worked well for you in the past. We work collaboratively to achieve your therapeutic aims.

LGBTQ+/ GSRD Affirmative

This means my practice is inclusive and affirmative of all genders, sexualities and safe and consensual relationship styles, including (but not limited to) people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, asexual and/ or trans, non-binary, gender-diverse, intersex, and/ or are in relationships which are polyamorous and/ or kinky/involve fetishes or BDSM. I am also sex-worker affirmative.

Intersectional

My work is informed by an intersectional approach. What this means is that I understand my clients to have multiple strands to their identities which interact with and modify each other. For example, if I was working with a trans woman of colour, I understand that her experience of being a woman is different to that of a cis woman or a white woman, or even a cis woman of colour or white trans woman, because it is shaped not only by her gender but also by her race and trans status. Similarly, I would understand that a gay disabled male client’s experience of his sexuality would be likely to be impacted on by his disability, and so on.  The term ‘intersectional’ was coined by black feminist Law Professor Kimberle Crenshaw. You can find out more about her work here https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/kimberle-crenshaw .

The Minority Stress Model

Meyer’s Minority Stress model theorised how incongruence between a marginalised individual’s experiences and the dominant cultural ideas they are exposed to, and subsequent conflict between said individual and their social environment, can give rise to a form of stress called ‘minority stress‘

(Source, Meyer, I. H. (1995). Minority stress and mental health in gay men. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 36(1), 38–56)