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My career has swung between more pragmatic CBT work, which certainly can be more immediately helpful, and becoming something more of a pain journalist as time has moved on. Sometimes there's complexities and past entanglements that are worth unraveling. We don't have to dig up every trauma, but there's power in incrementally engaging with what scares us.

Ultimately I do realise it can just be tricky to even know what the problem is sometimes, other than we know something is wrong and we're just feeling particularly stuck about it. I'm not just a good listener, I'm keen to have a conversation and explore not only what the matter is, but ultimately what matters to you. This is a process of mutual learning.

From the first session we'll try to get to know the problem. Sometimes it's just a case of getting out what's on the top of your mind and the more we unravel the clearer certain themes will emerge. Often it's the case that a problem discussed well can be half the solution itself. It's not just changing your relationship with the thoughts, but moreover the emotions they give you. There's always a reason you've developed the relationship with certain emotions in the way you have. It's not necessarily a case of getting rid of them, but a realignment of your own philosophy around them, especially when you come to realise how you've been shaped by them for better and worse, can actually give you a lot of gold and greater fluidity in your life and thinking. Succinctly put, you'll worry less and have greater confidence.

It's not that things shouldn't matter to you. Yes you're gonna feel pain around certain situations still. But it's unlocking something essential within yourself when it comes to not just coping with this pain better, but actually to move with it more as a guiding light in your life, rather than finding yourself going round in circles trying to escape what only seems to feel dark about it.

Change is not transformation. It's expansion. There's no need to get rid of the old you or your old way of coping. You can't anyway and you might still need that part of you going forward. It's just that you don't want to be stuck with one way of coping, fundamentally. Because this will remain a vicious cycle. Instead, we're effectively trying to open out the other 20-30% of your own mind (the deeper part of your own unconscious which has always been recording), in order you can find confidence from living by the heart (gut) more. This will free your mind as you'll come to accept that you don't need to free yourself from your own mind. As in you'll feel easier with solving what matters to you from it, at your own pace, and the rest of the time you're able to observe emotion.