Counselling with Sibyl

What you can expect from our sessions

It’s my goal to create a warm, empathetic environment to explore the issues you’re facing and support you to process your feelings about what is happening. I’ll ask what you’re looking for from therapy, and this will help structure our sessions. My approach is talking therapy, which means an emphasis on growing your self-understanding through conversation.

If I feel it would be helpful to you, I like to bring in theories and ideas from my training in Transactional Analysis (TA) and other areas that we can explore together. Sometimes we can get too in our head and try to think our way out of our feelings, so I also like to bring in mindfulness or somatic exercises to support your therapy journey. I am a big reader and love learning about people and the world - this informs my practice with clients. You can check out my blog to see what I’ve been reading.

Sometimes people come to therapy looking for answers from the practitioner. I am happy to share my knowledge with you, but I ultimately believe you are the expert about yourself. My hope is that through our relationship, you can deepen your awareness of who you are and what you want from your life. Everyone has a different goal from therapy, but my hope is that you can leave our sessions feeling listened to and understood.

What is TA?

I am trained using Transactional Analysis (TA), which is a humanist approach originally developed in the 1950s/60s. I like TA because the ideas are accessible for everybody and great tools for understanding why we are the way we are and why we think, feel and behave the way we do.

In TA, we talk about ‘ego states’, which can be seen as mind sets or ways of being. Inside of us, we have child, adult and parent ego states. When something happens which triggers you and you have a strong emotional response, you may be in your child ego state because your body is being reminded of a past situation. Similarly, when you are being very hard on yourself you may be coming from a parent ego state, feeling like you are back in school or with a strict parent figure.

If you find yourself stuck in the same patterns in life which aren’t serving you, you may be becoming aware of your ‘life script’. I can help you identify your script and look at ways of breaking out of these patterns.

The main principles of TA are:

• Everyone is OK

• Everyone has the capacity to think

• Everybody can change

These principles underline my work with clients as I believe everyone is fundamentally OK, even if they have coping mechanisms that aren’t helpful, or have experienced life challenges.

Each person may think differently, but we all have the capacity to think about ourselves, our relationships and the world around us. If we are able to think, then we are able to make the changes that will help us live authentic, fulfilling lives.