My therapeutic approach
is holistic. This means that I look at each person as a whole and see body, soul (the emotional world) and mind (the cognitive abilities) as a unit.
Traditional psychotherapies generally work on the cognitive level. People often come to me who have been in psychotherapy for many years. They now understand everything about themselves and their problems, but nothing really changes in their lives.
The therapeutic work with a holistic approach aims not only to understand the cause of the problems intellectually, but also to experience them on a physical-emotional level and consequently to understand them. Here I can experience and feel what I really need and where I am heading.
On a mental level, I can only speculate and easily get lost in thoughts about what I should do.
Thinking and understanding is relatively easy for most of us. So simple that we have also adopted thinking as a protection against unpleasant feelings.
When I think, I stay in my head and can't really feel. So I can easily avoid all the threatening feelings that live in my body.
However, this defeats the purpose of thinking, which is to solve problems: I can think about things forever and consider thousands of solutions and still not know what I should do next.
When the mind starts to take on a life of its own, I leave my feeling emotional being (my inner child). I am no longer fully present. So I can neither perceive my feelings nor my real needs.
Consequently, I also don't know what the next step is on the way to my goal, my well-being.
The aim of my work is to restore the balance between thinking and feeling. That's why in my practice we focus on the body, where the feeling takes place. It is the stunted parts of the being (the abandoned inner child) that need our attention.
This also applies to very emotional people who think they tend to feel too much. The point is: they don't feel too much, but they are often too much at the mercy of their feelings. This is also due to an imbalance between feeling and thinking.
The image of the inner child helps me to understand this: A child whose needs are not being met will make itself known. If it is not noticed, it will start to whine and at some point it will cry.
If I ignore the needs of my inner child, it's no different: the emotional pressure builds up inside me until the feelings burst out. They overwhelm me and I am no longer able to steer myself or the situation in a constructive direction. However, if I am able to perceive the signals from my body and soul more directly, I will be able to deal with them differently.
Excessive thinking doesn't help me, it prevents me from processing what needs to be processed. I start to brood and can no longer think clearly.
However, if I can perceive my feelings, give them space and express them when necessary, the stress level decreases and my mind becomes calm again and my thinking clear.
In practice, this means that we concentrate very strongly on perception in the here and now. Questions arise such as: What am I feeling right now? Am I feeling at all or am I separated from my feelings? And if I'm not really feeling, what kind of state am I in right now? What does it do to me to experience myself as disconnected or fragmented? Do I experience this as good, as bad? How do I actually perceive this “bad”?
Each of these questions aims to find the point of contact that helps us to find our way back to the body in the here and now. Here I can feel again. Feelings are allowed to take up space and be expressed. Balance is restored and calm and clarity are restored.
We don't need to dig into the past, but it is always welcome and will come up when feelings that originate there arise.
There are many ways that people can return to their feelings. As we are all different, we also react differently to methods and assistance. Some of us find our point of contact most easily in silence, while others lose themselves in silence and get in touch with themselves more easily when they can speak. Others (many in fact!), easily lose themselves in talking. Following physical movement cues can really help some of us to come to feeling, while others can let go when they feel a supportive hand at their back.
What works can be different for everyone, even from day to day. My aim is to work with you to find the easiest way for you to access your inner life here and now. I draw on a wealth of experience from many years of work and many different methods.