Psychotherapy and Counselling.
"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue"
Rainer Maria Rilke
For me, therapy is a collaborative process where, through dialogue, we seek to make sense of your lived experience. It is my belief that by gaining a clearer understanding of your situation and sense of what you really want in your life, new choices and possibilities may emerge and the practical steps to realise these changes can then be embarked upon. Therapy is not about categorising people using labels or diagnoses but instead it allows the opportunity to stay with, and find meaning in the unique experience of a person’s suffering.
I offer a confidential and non-judgemental space where your feelings and experiences can be shared. Should we work together, we could reflect on and explore your situation: how things are for you now and have been in the past, what is important to you, and how things might be going forwards. Neither psychotherapy nor counselling can provide you with a ‘quick fix’ or a ‘cure’; I don’t offer “tools”, “techniques” or “homework” and neither do I give advice. Instead, I think of myself as standing alongside you in the journey to knowing yourself better and finding the answers that only you can know.
A therapeutic relationship built on trust, care and honesty provides the foundation to my practice. I work in a relational way which means that at times I may bring light to our relationship and encourage us to reflect on our way of being with one another in order to further our understanding of your relationships with others in your life beyond the therapy.
Principally, I work from an existential-phenomenological perspective. This may sound unfamiliar to you or off-putting, but in simple terms it means that the therapy is informed by a philosophy engaged with what it means to be human.
I have experience of working with people on an open ended basis, as well as for short-term, or time-limited periods.
In my experience, people seek psychotherapy and counselling for any number of reasons. These include, but are not limited to:
∙ Relationship issues
∙ Anxiety
∙ Depression
∙ Identity issues
∙ Abuse
∙ Eating issues
∙ Loneliness and isolation
∙ Bereavement and loss
∙ COVID-19 related issues
∙ Trauma
∙ LGBTQ+ and gender issues
∙ Health issues
∙ Meaninglessness
Email: ruthdaytherapy@gmail.com ∙ Phone: 07340 150711