Safety and connection
Let's start with two statements: in order to explore insecurity and pain, a certain amount of safety is needed. And, emotional wounds often originate in unhealthy contact or lack of contact with other people. Only in proper contact with another human being, these wounds can heal again.
The foundation of an effective session is safety and trust in the contact between you and me. Feeling at ease in a new place and with a new person takes some time. Therefore, especially in the beginning of our sessions, I take time to let your nervous system get used to the situation, I attune to you, meet you where you are now and allow sufficient safety and trust to develop. Step by step we start to explore your desired outcome of the sessions more deeply.
How I work
This is about you. I listen to your words, I observe what your body is doing, and I notice what I feel in our meeting. I invite you to become curious yourself about what is happening in you and to express that. I do that in different ways. By asking questions or giving insightful information. By using various methods and frameworks such as bio-energetics, Reichian breathwork, character analysis, Gestalt, Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine) and the Polyvagal Theory (Steven Porges). And mainly by being present in your process. Without right or wrong. Being curious about how life unfolds itself as you.
Sessions are a collaboration to which we both contribute. Your part is primarily to bring yourself in with your thoughts, your feelings and your questions. My part to bring in the appropriate interventions that bring you just to the edge of what you know and invite a step into new territory. Because that's where healing can happen.
It can be an exciting journey and it takes courage to move out of your comfort zone. To see what is really going on. To feel anger, fear, sadness and grief. To speak out things you've kept to yourself until now. To take off the mask bit by bit and show your true self. I know this place well myself and I am happy to accompany and guide you on your journey. Together we also explore how you can move back to more relaxation after you got in touch with the tension in you.
Moving back to what's familiar you might say. And yet something is different, you have experienced something new, you have grown a bit. Your comfort zone just got a little bigger. There is a new reality with new possibilities.
From survival to being fully alive
When we were young, to some extent we all made the experience of having our natural liveliness rejected or responded to in the wrong way. As small children and babies we are dependent on our environment, on our caregivers being there for us in a healthy way, therefore missing attunement is painful for us and it can even seem life-threatening. By developing so-called survival strategies, we try to feel the pain less and survive the situation. We suppress our natural impulses and adapt to the environment. And that works, fortunately.
Unconsciously, we maintain these survival strategies as adults. As a result, we are not free to choose and we still suppress our natural impulses. This takes a lot of energy and can even lead to physical illness. What saved us back then is actually working against us now.
In body-oriented psychotherapy, we explore what strategies we have developed, how they have manifested in our bodies, emotions, behaviour and thoughts, and what helps us to develop more healthy ways. When we suppress less how we really are, we become more at ease and we have more energy available to us. To do the things we really want to do, to be who we really are. We get in touch with our natural power and we can now choose what we want to do. We stop just surviving, and we start to live a purposeful and fulfilling life.
