Robert Evans

Someone once said that psychotherapy is a process of introducing us to the one person we will spend our whole life with: namely our self. This suggests we may not know ourselves as well as we think and that we might require some help in acquainting ourselves with our self. This implies that there are certain things that seem threatening, out of character or which expose our vulnerabilities which incline us to look away. But in our forgetting we may find ourselves repeating old or familiar patterns that no longer serve and support us.

This brings us to another facet of psychotherapy: namely our relationship to help. We spend much of our lives being helped in different ways but how often do we consider our relationship to help, our need to be helped or our capacity to tolerate and bear being helped? We all carry unexamined stories about help and what we believe we can and can't be helped with in our lives. Until we can see the influence of the past it can be difficult to know what changes we need to make in the present.

Psychotherapy then is in some way concerned with getting to the root of our difficulties, our stuckness, our going round in circles and offers a way of exploring our underlying problems which aren't so easily or readily accessible to our usual ways of investigation.

Your therapy sessions are an invitation for you to speak as openly and freely as you can. This can actually be challenging as we tend to edit and censor much of what we think and feel. So try and say whatever comes to mind. Talking is at the heart of psychotherapy and the more open you are during your sessions the more you will come to know about yourself. The more you speak, the more you will start making connections and links in your life. This often takes time and so I would encourage anyone interested in beginning psychotherapy to be patient, results are rarely instant but over time gather momentum.

As time goes on you will experience all manner of thoughts and feelings towards your therapy and your therapist. It is important at this point to speak about this in your therapy sessions. Often these thoughts and feelings arise when we touch upon something deeper within ourselves. Of course, if you take an instant dislike to your therapist then I suggest that you seek out someone else. There may be times when it becomes a struggle to keep your appointments. Demands from work and family responsibilities may try and take you away from your therapy. These interruptions may seem unrelated to your therapy but often occur when we touch something difficult and challenging. Try and keep to each and every appointment, no matter what. 

When we meet, you can tell me about yourself and what it is that has brought you here. You may have some questions that are on your mind about how I work. I usually suggest that we arrange three initial consultations to help us both decide upon whether working together will be useful. A desire to understand yourself better, and perhaps function better in the world may be sufficient motivation to engage in psychotherapy.