Confidential Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy gives you the space to tell your story to a therapist who will hear it and who will help you recognise more profoundly the effects and impact of those experiences on you, your life and your relationships. The psychotherapist then offers you the time and space to explore and resolve the issues that are troubling you and getting in the way of you living a fuller, happier life.
Different people respond to different approaches, a variety of therapies exist, which include cognitive behavioural therapy, psychodynamic therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and group therapy.
Psychoanalysis
"That's just the tip of the iceberg", so often we hear this phrase used in description of scenarios. Sigmund Freud proposed that what we know about ourselves is the small perceptible part of a much larger situation or problem that remains hidden, our unconscious.
Do you have questions about who you are, what it means to be a man or a woman, why things are how they are in your life, what motivates you? Psychoanalysis endeavours to reach the underlying, often unconscious sources of a person’s distress.
"Psychoanalysis as a form of treatment offers the possibility of exploring difficult experiences, ailments, distressing thoughts or feelings, anxieties and inhibitions. This may give access to a new knowledge about the intimate motivations of one’s actions; what desires, fantasies and ideals are at play in one’s choices; how words and meanings have impacted on one’s relationship with oneself and with others," (Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland, 2020).
My approach:
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Munthu means "Person" in Chichewa (a language native to Malawi). My process is guided by the framework of psychoanalysis, valuing the singular experience. At Munthu, I will invite you to speak freely and I will provide a listening ear.
I invite the person who is encountering life's difficulties, or suffering from distressing symptoms to attend sessions once or twice per week, depending on circumstances. The sessions are an invitation to speak whatever comes into mind, without putting the material in order, sanitizing it for my ears. There is no insistence on the sort of thing to be spoken about, I simply invite you to just speak without censoring yourself.
"In our everyday lives, we’re mindful of what we say, and to whom we speak – often with very good reason. It’s not easy to allow ourselves the freedom to speak without restraint. The psychoanalytic space is a freed-up space, which facilitates that work, and the relation to the analyst is not like any other of our relationships in life. The analyst listens for the repetitions and blockages which have been shaping our lives. Over the course of the work a different relationship to our own existence emerges," (Irish Council for Psychotherapy, 2020)
Here at Munthu Psychotherapy, singularity drives the process. There are no two people's experiences that are the same. Are you noticing patterns in the relationship difficulties you have, are you finding yourself back where you started with friendships, are problems mounting up on you one after another is solved, do you feel, alone, unloved and unseen, is life just too much? Have you tried therapy before but find yourself back where you started? Psychoanalysis has the most longstanding effects on the subject, long after sessions have stopped.
What is your story?