Psychotherapy can bring understanding to how we become ‘stuck’ or ‘lost’ on this journey of life.

Therapy works by bringing awareness to patterns and hidden agendas that are unconsciously running our lives. The more we bring unconscious thoughts, feelings, motives and views to the surface, the less control they have over us and therefore there is less likelihood of being caught up in old patterns that don’t work any more.

It is easy to lose track, to become driven by irrational fears or emotions, taken over by anxiety or depression - with out being able to see a way to change we become victims of our psychology. Clearly these painful patterns are not what we would consciously choose, they are developed over time unconsciously as creative coping mechanisms and are outside of our awareness. These mechanisms formed (for the most part in childhood) as ways of dealing with painful situations, they become defenses that often stop serving us later in life and can end up working against us.


Many people avoid therapy because of a fear that it’ll be too painful. For some people it may seem easier to stay stuck in depression rather than face what really hurts. We can cling to beliefs and feelings of unworthiness, hopelessness and self-doubt rather than questioning these habitual views of ourselves. Once we uncover these unconscious beliefs and modes of behaviour we are more able to face the deeper feelings that have been avoided by self-destructive patterns, anxiety, dissociation etc.

Although this process can be painful, it is a way to healing old wounds and to dissolving redundant patterns of functioning that are keeping us locked in unhealthy ways of relating to others, to ourselves and the world.

Psychotherapy is a kind of re-learning or de-conditioning process. It happens through deep personal insight. There is no ‘quick fix’, through developing trust in the process and the therapist, we discover and incorporate into our constant, every-day consciousness that which is being masked, distracted from, or indirectly "acted out" in symptoms. The goal is a general increase in contentment, power, freedom, and happiness. It is sometimes called "self-actualization" and the main keys are acceptance and awareness.