I see people for a range of issues emerging from their lives including depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, workplace concerns, family relationship issues, behavioural problems, parenting, and life transitions.
People who engage in therapy with me undertake the challenge of relating to their difficulties in new ways as well as assuming responsibility for the direction they want their life to take. Clients quickly learn that the real ‘work’ happens outside the therapy room, in the context of their significant relationships. Once committed to, psychotherapy involves a process of self-growth, emotional regulation, self-differentiation, and personal evolution.
My approach is based on Bowen family systems theory, a theory of human behaviour developed by Dr. Murray Bowen. Bowen family systems theory views human beings and their problems as embedded in the broader context of their social and family environments. A person’s problems, from this perspective, are not divorced from their relationship systems. Bowen family systems theory does not view issues as belonging solely to the individual but rather sees human functioning as interconnected to, and co-created by, the individual’s relationship system. A disturbance observed within the individual is a reflection of a disturbance in the (family or social) group. According to Dr Bowen, “human behaviour, along with that of any other social species, is not only self-regulated by individuals, but co-regulated in the highly interdependent systems in which individuals are embedded” (Noone & Papero, 2015). Aligning with the principles of evolutionary biology, Dr. Bowen viewed the human family as a natural system, and the individual, as a member of that system.
Natural systems thinking – is based on the evolutionary biological idea that individuals both impact their environment/family system and are impacted by it, the two are not separate but in constant relationship. They are in reciprocity, the same way ants are in reciprocity with their colony. We do not isolate an ant’s behaviour by asking: why is that ant carrying food in that direction? Rather, we view and make sense of the ant’s behaviour in relationship to its colony, its natural system. Similarly, a human being’s functioning is interconnected to their family/environment system, both past and present.