Therapy, at its heart, is not about fixing, but about tending. The Greek therapeia means to attend to and care for. In Arabic, the word shifāʾ carries a similar resonance, suggesting a deeper healing of the heart. In recent years, the word therapy has been applied across many areas, often to describe gentle support or reorientation. Yet unlike most areas of modern life, it is not rooted in outcomes or performance. Therapy is a space in which the unseen can be quietly attended to, understood, and, in time, restored.
“The heart is like a mirror; when it is rusted, it reflects nothing. Its polishing is through remembrance and reflection.”
-IMAM AL GHAZALI
This therapy is based on the principle that you are the expert; that you know yourself better than anyone else, even if life has caused you to forget. Beneath that of which you are consciously aware, lies a deep ocean, rich with insight and answers that may have remained unnoticed for many years. In therapy, at your pace, we begin to access that depth. In time, you may come to see how the surface of your life is shaped by a deeper understanding within.
What to expect in therapy
The overall pattern of change is nurtured through; understanding the story, defining the existing architecture of how you see yourself, through archaeology- gently seeking for truths beneath the surface, by unburdening- releasing what was not yours to hold, by reassessing the architecture of the self, by rehearsing in real life and untangling any difficulties.
This process is dynamic, not linear. Some people will move through the process repeatedly in a spiral and others will spend a long time in one area or move back and forth between different areas. Everyone is different.
In therapy, we are not imagining a perfect image of you and working towards that. There is no such thing. We are working towards you believing that, rather than a fixed thing, you are a process. If you have developed narrow and certain views of yourself, we delve into the ocean to see if you can widen that that view. In widening your self concept and realising that your state is never a constant, rather than break with the challenges of life, you will bend.
The reed, which bends before the storm, survives, while the mighty oak is broken.
– AESOP