Counselling and Psychotherapy

You may be looking for counselling or psychotherapy because…

• you wish to deal with deep-rooted feelings – such as anger or resentment, sadness or grief, anxiety, depression, jealousy, guilt or shame…. and all kinds of difficult thoughts or experiences
• you may be in some kind of crisis, or feeling stuck, bored, or lacking energy – as if life feels ‘distant’ or ‘grey’, experiencing a disturbing sense of unreality, or generally uneasy ‘being here’…
• you have fears about the state of our planet – and what the future may hold
• you have (perhaps silently held) existential fears and/or questions you wish to explore – including fear of death or dying, or questions regarding the possibility of continuing consciousness
• you long to develop meditative whole-being mindfulness… and enjoy true quality of life… with a real sense of ‘home’ within your being
• you are experiencing increasingly intense clarity or depth of conscious awareness – in a process sometimes referred to as ‘spiritual awakening’ – for which you require down-to-earth spiritual guidance or mentoring – with encouragement and support, and perhaps reassurance as well

Psychotherapy – and Counselling

The core work of psychotherapy is to develop a healthy conscious relationship with your very own sense of self and being, while increasing – within the transpersonal approach – your consciousness awareness (eg: ‘mindfulness’) together with down-to-earth spiritual awakening.

Psychotherapy

transpersonal psychotherapy is grounded in integrative psychotherapy, a deeply explorative thorough therapeutic process. Transpersonal psychotherapy is designed to extend beyond the confines of integrative psychotherapy… into a profoundly transformative heart-centred process. Creating a natural kind of ‘coming home’, this is a place of deep ease of being and warm expansiveness.

For this therapeutic work, I draw from my own ‘whole-being awareness’ (deeply evolved ‘mindfulness’), with a pragmatic feet-on-the-ground meditational attitude. I will introduce and guide each person through an intuitive ‘sensing’ process of ‘self-development’, as we work together in a freeing spirit of curiosity designed to bring about helpful realisations.

The therapeutic process, when genuinely engaged in, is designed to significantly improve quality of life. Furthermore, counselling and psychotherapy are not just for times of crisis – nor just to ease, find strategies for, or resolve a long-established problem or deep-rooted difficulty. The therapeutic process is found to assist those who wish to explore how best to ‘do life’, significantly improving genuine quality of life. As such, psychospiritual psychotherapy becomes a valuable life investment.

Engaging in the process of transpersonal psychotherapy is designed to help you…

• work through any issues holding you back, restricting you, or making life stressful or depressing 
• become increasingly calm, at ease or ‘at home’ within yourself, as you develop confidence and inner strength, stability and clarity – while learning to be guided by your sense of what feels ‘right’
• be your real authentic self – beyond any fear-based performance or pretence, while deepening a real sense of being. Learning to get out of your own way enables a natural healing process, which then makes life more meaningful, enriching – and fun!
• awaken and/or deepen your subtle sense of being and awareness in this moment (mindfulness) regarding your own self and others, together with your experience in the world, thereby gaining self-empowerment through awareness of conscious choice
• develop your conscious awareness and sense of subtle energy patterns and levels… towards a warming holding deeply soulful ‘spiritual awakening’ – and immense presence of ‘oneness’

As a therapist trained in integrative counselling and transpersonal psychotherapy, I work with awareness of the whole of you, however you are…. as you engage in a process of conscious self-development. Every therapist naturally develops ‘specialisms’. Mine include:

Relational Issues – and Conscious Relationships

In support of conscious relationships… our closest deepest connection is with our life-long companion – our self. So, working with your relationship with You is the core of therapy (involving  self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-assertiveness – as well as personal identity, including sexual orientation and gender identity). As your sense of self becomes clearer and healthier, your self-acceptance will deepen – naturally improving  your way of relating with others and with life.

Emotional & Psychological issues

Uncomfortable emotional-psychological sensations include stress, anxiety, low mood, sadness, grief, anger, fear, low self-esteem, guilt and shame – such uncomfortable states unawarely maintained with unhelpful unrealistic ‘stories’.

When we become aware of accompanying emotional sensations – particularly the uncomfortable ones, it’s natural to want to ‘get rid of’ them. However, this tends instead to maintain them! In addition, emotions convey vital information with the potential to alert us to underlying beliefs and needs, indicating when something is unhealthy or ‘not right’ for us, thereby guiding us in our actions and choices.

Psychiatric or ‘mental health’ conditions

Those conditions include depression, anxiety, panic attacks, psychotic episodes, dissociative disorders (eg: derealisation and depersonalisation), and borderline personality disorder (BPD) – or Emotional Instability Personality Disorder (EIPD), or Emotional Dysregulation Disorder (EDD). However, my focus is the individual as a person… Experiencing miserable emotional states of mind creates the opportunity to enter a healingful transformative process – often referred to as a ‘dark night of the soul’ (see ‘Dark Nights of the Soul’ by Thomas Moore). The results are likely to enrich and colour your life while deepening your personal and spiritual development. This is psychospiritual work.

Spiritual Psychotherapy and Whole-Being-Awareness

In our world of easy distractions, disconnection and dis-ease is ‘the norm’. Commonly, there is a feeling of unease – and longing to feel comfortable ‘in our own skin’. There may be a longing to ‘come home’; and a longing to find our sense of meaning or path in life, to explore existential or spiritual experiences, ideas, and questions – and to realise essential truth.  The kind of ‘mindfulness’ involved may be described as a wish to stay ‘awake’ and be ‘here now’… while observing the ‘whole picture’, without judgment or expectation. I shall add that such ‘mindfulness’ is a psychospiritual non-pharmacological means of dealing with a range of issues which interfere with daily life – such as anxiety or stress, anger, fear, depression, grief, feeling lost or stuck…

Existential Fears, Concerns & Questions

What is ‘death’? What of ‘consciousness’? Why am I here? While such questions may be simple curiosity, they are often instead deeply unsettling – if not terrifying (triggering panic). Rooted in early life, such fears and concerns are frequently pushed down and buried, kept there by handy distractions and avoidance. When rooted in fear of death, existential questions typically involve the nature of consciousness – and with it, self-existence. Existential fears, unless faced, will cast a large grey shadow… draining life of colour, warmth, and aliveness: like a living death. However, the explorative process of therapy, when engaged in and followed through, is designed to create a welcome sense of ‘coming home’…into a deep calm warm safe place within. 

Paintings & Drawings © Jaimie Cahlil

Every painting and drawing reproduced here is the original work of Jaimie Cahlil who originally trained at Oxford University’s Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art (1972-1975).  For the title of any picture, place your cursor or finger on that image.

COPYRIGHT: while Jaimie is happy for anyone to copy his art for personal non-commercial use only, anyone wishing to reproduce his images commercially is required to first obtain Jaimie’s written permission.  (Enquiries: contact Jaimie)