"Everyone fights reality and reality wins...but only everytime."
Adyashanti
"There is a universal law which says that nothing can manifest without two sides."
Dr John Demartini
We live in a world where great, empathic, connected listening skills, are in short supply. Attuned listening in an open and caring way, is the starting point of all great therapy. It is also part of an ongoing learning and re-orientating ourselves toward a new way of being, living, thinking and feeling in a world of a multiplicity of challenges.
What comes next is 2 things. #1 I consider myself a Person Centered and Reality Centered therapist.
The issue of listening reflects the Person Centered aspect.
To be Reality centered refers to my assisting my clients in navigating the immense challenges that life brings us. Intimacy, career, kids, money, boundaries, health, relationships, conflict, trauma, grief and abuse.
Everyone of us fights reality and we lose, to quote Adyashanti, "...but only every time."
To come at it from another angle, there is the beautiful phrase: "Reality continues to ruin my life!" I help my clients, using multiple techniques to release their resistance to the pain, trauma, stress and agony of life, enabling greater calm and peace - not complete calm and peace, because that is impossible, but certainly greater.
#2 involves going far beyond the traditional talk therapies. Most specifically Brain Based Therapies (BBT) and Somatic (body) work. I'm now in my 40th year as a Clinical Psychologist - and 25th year as a Management Consultant and feel as though these discoveries have enabled a re-invention of what I do. It is a privilege to be able to help more clients, more effectively than I ever have before.
The launch pad for the work I do is based on Charl Vorster's IPA (Interactional Pattern Analysis) model, developed in the most profound way by Jeanie Cave. This model tells me where a client is most effective in their interactions with the world and where they struggle.
IPA enables an Integrative Approach to psychotherapy. Integrating different methods, based on a scientific assessment of what method will work best, when!
It enables me to focus on what is most important in our therapy sessions, highlighting where my clients difficulties are focused, so that I can prioritize and enable greater effectiveness, leading to change.
In addition, IPA is extraordinarily useful in assisting clients in understanding where they are effective and skillful and ineffective and unskillful in managing their relationships. Powerful boundaries and managing conflict and difficult people is the most powerful way to improve self esteem and I use this model to help my clients to build their interpersonal power and self esteem! I have published a book entitled Love Yourself for no Reason that explores Self Esteem more deeply.
Jeanie Cave has created a unique and pioneering approach to psychotherapy. It is called an Integrative Brain Based Approach (IBBA). It takes the standard BBT methods and integrates them into IPA, enabling enhanced therapeutic interventions.
BBT's function at a much deeper level than normal talk psychotherapy, i.e. they work neurologically and in the body. The BBT approaches I use include: Clinical Hypnosis, BWRT - Brainworking Recursive Therapy, BSP - Brainspotting, EMI - Eye Movement Integration and TRE - The stress and trauma release process.
I work with adults individually and with couples.
BBT's work with the entire brain. At a simplified level the brain is divided into 3 parts; the Neocortex, thinking, the Limbic System, where we experience feeling and the Brainstem, (often called the Reptilian Complex - because it is the most primitive part of the brain) where our fight-flight response is activated and where most of our trauma is held.
The 'mantra' for the Limbic System is - "Am I loved" and for the Reptillian Complex, it is: "Am I safe." If you do not feel Loved or Safe, then life is going to be an immense struggle for you and intimate relationships...are, unfortunately, going to be a monumental challenge.
In Brain Based work we start from the Reptillian Complex - bottom up - as opposed to talk therapy which is top down. Of course, when we are simply dialoguing, we are also doing very important top down work. Working top down and bottom up, together is very powerful.
Intimate Relationships
Very few people in intimate relationships, know how to express their needs in a loving and skillful way, enabling closeness i.e. this is the loving and effective expression of needs, as opposed to the critical and moralistic expression of needs that most couples engage in.
The reason, as noted above, is usually because they don't fell loved and/or safe.
Love, in most relationships is a noun. "I love you." It is a feeling inside. This has nothing to do with love as a verb. How much is love flowing in my relationship is really a great question you can ask yourself? It is the degree to which love flows that determines the quality of a relationship, particularly under pressure!
Growth Mindset
Carol Dweck has created a most powerful concept. Growth Mindset (GM). I have talked about IPA, which is about patterns of behaviour. Alongside working with behaviour, we can work with Mindset. Our attitude, how we think!
Our society is run through with Fixed Mindset.(FM)
FM is...get an A, be the best, be brilliant, be a success, achieve, don't fail, don't make mistakes. GM is about learning and growing and being authentic and spontaneous. FM is all about the destination and GM is about the journey. In this work I help you to learn how to spend more time in GM.
It is overwhelmingly rewarding!
I work with adults - 18 years and upwards - individually and with couples.
What I Work With
- Couples therapy. I have completed Level 1 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy and use Gottman Method Couples Therapy in my work. After 40 years in the field, I can say with absolute confidence that the Gottman Method, though not perfect, enables more significant and sustainable change than any other method I have come across. It is based on 40 years of intensive research with 3,000 couples.
- It helps couples to change the way in which they dialogue, before trying to resolve their problems.
- This work has changed my life.
- Anxiety and panic attacks - an arena I much much personal and professional experience in. I really know how debilitating they can be! I approach anxiety using conscious techniques and deeper subconscious work, depending on your history, needs and expectations. The subconscious causes are very deep and mostly reflect our need for control. And the more we want to control life, the more anxious we get!
- Depression - this can be worked with from many angles. Brain Based Work (BBW) on deep emotional trauma as well as Cold Water Immersion and breathing techniques that activate dopamine creation, provide unique ways of healing depression. In addition, human beings are wired to go into fight - flight - freeze under pressure and threat. One of the major causes of depression is a 'blocked fight back response'. As kids we are powerless to fight back against our care givers and releasing this through BBW can lead to extraordinary healing.
- Career challenges. My corporate consulting work has given me deep insight into the challenges associated with the corporate world and career stress. There are many strategies for working with this, including a technique I created, called Strategic Questions to build power and confidence in managing difficult people and cultures. I often combine Executive Coaching with deep emotional work. They often go together.
- "Intimate relationships are an opportunity to be 3 years old again, so we can have another 3 year old to fight with!" After 4 decades of working with couples, I came to the above conclusion. Saying you love your partner is of no use whatsoever. Such 'saying' is a noun. It is static. Love needs to become a verb, a doing word, something that happens under pressure. About 4% of couples can do this, but you don't need to be too disheartened, the skills required to be one of the 4% are very clearly delineated and understood. The foundation for this work lies in IPA and the Empathy Training I created out of space. Learning to make space for pain, slowing down, softening, opening...allowing the love to flow with your partner, under pressure, is learnable!
- Chronic Fatigue. I have personally experienced this for over 3 decades and have consulted multiple doctors, allopathic and alternative. I can share my psychological learnings and practical strategies for working with this.
- I also work, from a cognitive perspective on how to manage existential issues - the challenges of isolation, meaning, purpose, love, grief/death/loss, trauma, improving motivation and focus around work, health, fitness and sports performance, emigration stress, navigating problematic family issues - which covers 100% of families!!!
- I share with my clients multiple techniques, all of which I use personally, on a daily basis, to reduce stress and activate the relaxation, as opposed to the fight or flight response. These include: Clinical and Self-Hypnosis - the latter is Very useful for activating deep relaxation! Improving Heart Rate Variability through specific breathing techniques - Heart Rate Variability is one of the easiest to measure and best assessments of your levels of stress and health - Les Fehmi's Open Focus Brain method, Wim Hof's cold water immersion and breathing technique and Adyashanti's unique meditation technique.
- Sleep problems. Sleep, diet and exercise are crucial for mental and physical health. There are multiple techniques for improving and working with this triad.
- Alcoholism and drug addiction. One of the most challenge mental wellness challenges. If you want to put in the work, I can help you.
- I use many methods, developed over decades of working on myself and with clients, for helping to release overwhelming emotions, including: A Surrender to Helplessness meditation, a What would it feel like to...emotional release technique, moving from Fear...to Trust, softening Grasping and Wanting more pleasure - the defining feature of the Ego, in which we are all immersed.
- These techniques help us to create space in the nervous system, which is necessary when we are overwhelmed, enabling the BBW work to be more effective. Many approaches rush too quickly to the trauma work, before space has been created in the nervous system, making the trauma work ineffective. Building Resourcefullness ie the ability to relax and restore your nervous system and energy is often a crucial foundation to the emotional work.
- Here is my Empathy Test:
"What would you say to your 10 year old child who is going to the dentist for the first time and they say they are anxious"
Most people answer: "Don't worry, it'll be fine...I love you...you're a strong kid...it won't hurt(which is a lie!)"
This is Corrective Listening!!! Thanks to Jeff Brown for the term.
It is not making space for the child's anxiety.
I had a prostate operation a while back.
I did not have cancer. Most of the people I know said: "You'll be fine...these ops have a great success rate...you've got this..."
I had 5 weeks of hell after the op. It went badly. I didn't "have this!"
I am, nevertheless, now fully recovered.
If you don't make space for people's pain, they will try to deal with it on their own and they will shut down and withdraw from you. The major component in failed relationships is distance. A lack of empathy for the pain of others', is a major factor in creating this.
- I see many clients who hate their careers. I use all of the above methods to help them change direction. I love the quote by Don Juan in the Carlos Castaneda books. "Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use."
- There are 3 pillars of Wisdom that I use in my work. I will just share one here.
Boundaries!
- I have worked with thousands of clients, helping them to develop powerful boundaries, that sometimes need to be expressed with softness and sometimes, simply with power. This is the most frequently recommended blog I have written, which I refer my clients to, that will give you some insight into this work.
- I also use the powerful work of Andrew Huberman, professor of Neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford University Medical School in order to create more energised focus and motivation and improve sleep in multiple areas of life. His research is groundbreaking!
Meditation
I have been meditating for 45 years. I started with Transcendental Meditation, did 3 years of Hindu meditation, 12 years of Buddhism and then gave up!!! I found that none of these approaches generalized into the rest of my life.
I then discovered Adyashanti. What a transformation! I use this method primarily to move toward Spiritual Awakening but it can be used to simply learn to calm down the nervous system. His meditation method is unique and transformational.
Make an Appointment.
I work in Fresnaye in Cape Town. I am also available for Zoom sessions. If you want to make an appointment, Whatts App me on +27 82454 9564