“I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and to touch another person” – Virgina Satir
I try to fully see you and listen to you. My approach is systemic, which means that I pay attention to the whole of you: your body, your feelings, your thoughts and the people around you.
In relationship counselling, this means I pay attention to each of you individually as well as what is happening between you, the cycles that you find yourself getting into, which may even have been helpful at some point, but now you feel you can somehow no longer get out of on your own.
Over the years, I have come to realise that any talking therapy needs to work with the body and the feelings that you have not (yet) been able to express in words, especially when it comes to traumatic experiences, improving intimacy and issues of anxiety. By listening to you, as well as help you work through some of your physical responses with emotion-focussed work, mindfulness techniques or hypnotherapy, I assist you in reconnecting with yourself and your deeper needs. In the relationship, we work together on helping both of you to reconnect to yourself, so that you are able to express your deeper needs and you become able to listen to your partner again with compassion.
In addition to the various therapeutic techniques that I have gathered over the years, I also use my own personal experiences of being human, living in an intercultural relationship, having moved countries a number of times, searching for belonging and raising my two kids with three languages and cultures.