Ben Crawshaw

Whilst theories and clinical experience are essential, in my view, the effectiveness of therapy rests on the quality of the human relationship between client and therapist. Therapy is an opportunity to discover more of who we are and how we relate to each other, through relating to another. The foundations of this therapeutic relationship are trust and the valuing of understanding.

You may come to therapy feeling confused and unhappy, or simply want to gain some clarity in certain aspects of your life. Through engaging in an ongoing collaborative exploration of your situation its possible to create space and consider making new choices, even in areas of your life that have previously felt stuck. Therapy can also be a time to begin facing up to parts of our lives and ourselves that have previously felt too painful to think about and understand.

I adopt mainly existential and psychodynamic approaches to understanding our human predicament. This means I'm interested in the various dimensions of your real life situation as well as your internal experience of the world. The focus of our work will be your subjective experience as well as an awareness of unconscious dynamics, relational and emotional patterns.

I’m interested in how our early experiences of family and relationships influence our ability to cope with life later on. We may repeat early learnt patterns of relating, and of protecting ourselves, even when they're no longer helpful and may even maintain our current problems. Through understanding these patterns and how they’re limiting us, it’s possible to begin making choices that can help lead a more fulfilling life.

I've been a mindfulness practitioner for over 10 years. I've worked with embodied experience in a variety of ways and this informs my work with clients.