Psychotherapy is a talk therapy, which involves exploring the issues or circumstances of life that cause discomfort or distress. It can be short term and focused on one particular issue, or long term as we delve deeper into the psyche. Often the first question someone might have, is what the difference is between psychotherapy and counselling. The answer is that there is very little difference and it’s up to the individual practitioner which service they offer, although the training for psychotherapy is often longer and the requirements for qualification harder to meet. Jess is trained in psychology, counselling and psychotherapy. She prefers the term psychotherapy because it conveys that there is the chance to go deeper within than a typical counselling session might involve.

We all grow up being conditioned, or programmed, by our environment. We form beliefs according to what is around us, such as whether the world is safe or dangerous, or whether other people can be relied upon. Those beliefs often lie in the subconscious mind, governing the way we live in adulthood, without us even realising that’s the case. Beliefs can leave us behaving in ways that don’t serve us. For instance, reaching for a drink to self soothe, or people pleasing, or a strong avoidance of conflict leaving us prone to putting up with the toxic behaviour of others. In longer term psychotherapy we aim to consider that conditioning and uncover any unhealthy beliefs we may have formed at a young age, such as I’m not good enough, or I’m unlovable, in order to continue life feeling so much better in ourselves.

Our approach is based on numerous different trainings, but in long term therapy it usually looks at the trauma someone has suffered. Often we consider trauma as a massive event such as sexual abuse, an accident or earthquake, and these are often traumatic events, but in fact trauma is much more subtle than that. Any occurrence in childhood that overwhelmed our capacity to cope, which wasn’t met by adequate caregiving, will have left a trauma imprint. That means those of us who grew up being seen and not heard, or being whacked for being cheeky, or sent to our rooms to think about what we’d done, or being terrified of an angry parent, or made to feel as if we were responsible for how a parent felt, may have childhood trauma imprints.