Integrative Counselling for Psychological wholeness

Counselling

The meaning of the word psyche has shifted. Once it meant soul; in modern times it has come to mean mind. I use it in the more traditional sense. The work can include diagnosis and therapeutic buzzwords, but it begins before, it asks the soul what it needs to say and then listens.

We live in a culture that asks us to be productive, coherent, healthy and in control, often encouraging us to push away whatever feels difficult, contradictory or unwanted.

My work begins from a different premise: that there is value in making space for the whole person.

You might come because you feel stuck, overwhelmed, divided against yourself, caught in patterns you don't understand, or simply because something in your life no longer feels right. You don't need to arrive with a clear diagnosis or a neatly defined problem. We can begin with whatever is actually present.

I offer a place where the different, sometimes conflicting parts of you can be seen and listened to, including those parts that have been exiled, judged, silenced or simply become difficult to understand. There is room here for the mundane, the eccentric and the difficult, without having to make yourself presentable.

I have found that quick fixes, spiritual promises and prescribed programmes can make us feel better for a while, but when the novelty wears off we can find ourselves back where we started. What has been most healing for me has been having somewhere I could speak from my internal world with little interruption — someone able to hold what I brought, or mirror it back to me. I am forever grateful to my therapeutic guide in this life.

I hope to offer something of that.

This will also be a place for challenge. We all we lie to ourselves. Often these are ways we have learnt to protect ourselves, and they may have served an important purpose. But sometimes the stories we tell ourselves begin to cover up something that needs to be seen.

There may be times when these things are carefully held up for examination. Not to expose or judge, and not because I think I know your truth better than you do, but because sometimes we need someone to gently point out what we cannot yet see for ourselves.

At the heart of this work is individuation: allowing the unique individual to emerge unashamed. I don't think healing means becoming a perfectly resolved or harmonious person. It can mean becoming more able to live with, understand and relate to all that you are.

There can be something very freeing in this — not only in becoming more fully yourself, but in no longer needing other people to be anything other than themselves either.

This is not a quick fix or an overnight transformation. It is a slower kind of work, creating enough space for the complexity of being human and allowing change to emerge rather than forcing it. Hopefully with humour and joy along the way.

All work is contracted and agreed upon before starting.

If you would like to explore whether this way of working might be right for you, please email me at bryonyannjohnson@gmail.com to arrange a consultation call.

online only £60 for 60 minutes