You May Still Be Wondering...

“Shouldn't I be able to work through this myself?”

Being a therapist gives you knowledge, insight and considerable experience of reflection, but it doesn't remove the need for another person or a therapeutic relationship.

There are some places that are difficult to reach from the position of being both therapist and client. Therapy gives you somewhere to put down the professional role and have another person sit alongside you, hold the process and support you in doing the work.

You don't need to demonstrate what you already know. We can acknowledge the experience and resources you bring while giving attention to the more vulnerable areas that have brought you to therapy.

“I've already had a lot of therapy — why is this still affecting me?”

Previous therapy doesn't become unsuccessful because something remains active or becomes important again.

Personal development continues throughout our lives. We can revisit an experience from a different place, with different resources, relationships and understanding. Sometimes the work that was possible or needed at one stage isn't the work that becomes possible later.

I see previous therapy as part of what you bring with you rather than something we need to repeat or undo. We work with what is relevant now.

“What if I understand exactly where this comes from, but it still doesn't feel resolved?”

This is one of the areas where EMDR can offer something different.

There can be a considerable difference between knowing something intellectually and experiencing it as true emotionally and physically. You may understand why you respond in a particular way, recognise its developmental origins and have thought about it extensively, while something in your nervous system continues to respond as though the earlier experience is still relevant now.

EMDR gives us a way of working with that remaining experience. The aim isn't to give you a better explanation of something you already understand, but to support change that can be experienced at a more embodied level.

“Will I find it difficult to let go of being the therapist and become the client?”

Possibly — and I don't think you need to force yourself not to be a therapist in order to do meaningful therapeutic work.

Your clinical experience is part of you. I won't pretend it disappears when you sit on the other side of the therapeutic relationship.

We can acknowledge that part of you while creating enough space for you not to have to manage the therapy. I hold responsibility for the therapeutic process so that you can increasingly allow yourself to occupy the client position.

“What if I find myself analysing you, the EMDR or what's happening in the room?”

That's okay. I wouldn't treat this as something you are doing wrong or something that has to be stopped.

Your awareness of process has developed for good reasons and can be a considerable resource. We can accommodate it within the work rather than trying to remove it.

If we notice that analysing the process begins to take you away from your own experience, we can become curious about that together. It may simply be professional habit; at other times, it may tell us something useful about what is happening in the work.

“What if part of me feels I should be further along with this by now?”

Knowing a great deal about psychological processes doesn't make you immune to them.

Therapists can carry an additional expectation that because they have undertaken therapy, training, supervision and personal development, they should have resolved particular areas of their own lives.

I don't approach the work from that position. We start with where you are now, not where either of us thinks you ought to be. If there is also a part of you that believes you should have dealt with this already, that can be understood with the same curiosity and respect as anything else you bring.

“Can I bring something that feels personal, messy or at odds with how I experience myself professionally?”

Yes.

You don't need to present a professionally coherent version of yourself in therapy. The parts of our lives that need attention don't always sit neatly alongside our professional understanding, values or the way others experience us.

The therapeutic space needs to be somewhere you can bring complexity, contradiction and vulnerability without having to organise it for somebody else's benefit.

My role isn't to assess you as a therapist. It is to meet you as the person who has come for therapy and work alongside you with whatever you choose to bring.

“Will I feel judged differently because you know I'm a therapist?”

I understand why this can feel particularly exposing. Working with another therapist means allowing yourself to be seen by someone who understands the profession from the inside.

I don't expect therapists who come to me to have resolved every difficulty in their own lives, nor do I interpret vulnerability as evidence of professional inadequacy. Personal development is an ongoing part of being human as well as being a therapist.

I have experience of working therapeutically with other therapists and recognise the particular sensitivity this can require. My intention is to provide the same confidential, non-judgmental and supportive therapeutic relationship I would offer any client, while respecting the additional experience and knowledge you bring.