Ben Jones

My goal is to provide a space for you to connect with and better understand the experiences that trouble you. This could be related to a specific issue in the short term, but also might be as general and open ended as the way you struggleto live or have lived throughout the course of your life. Often it starts withan attempt to reconnect with yourself and make deeper contact with where youare right now: something which might feel unbearable to do alone. Meeting in this place together however can provide the security and challenge for you to reveal your desires, fears, hopes and disappointments, so you might find new and creative possibilities for being alive in the world.

My approach to therapy is embodied, relational, and influenced by existential philosophy, while taking into account developmental perspectives and the way inwhich we are shaped from our early life experiences. This has in turn shaped the way I perceive the work: I aim to be with you and the whole of your experience, acknowledging the here-and-now as much as the there-and-then. We might, for instance, find focus around anxiety, stuck and past traumas, connecting to intimate relationships or just being present in the room together. What's important is that you're given the opportunity to think clearly, feel openly and speak from somewhere close to the heart about where these come together. This can be a radical endeavour when these channels for relating are closed – as they so often are – in day-to-day life.

Lastly, I take the view that whatever is happening for you needs to happen and is trying to, but what is essential for leaning into this is the support to be with it. This is where our contact and the relationship we develop can help, allowing usto unearth your experience, acknowledge your hurt, turn it over therapeutically and make new emotional sense from what we find. From this emerges not only thepotential for healing, but also a more meaningful, fulfilled life with the freedom to be more deeply connected with others and the community that surrounds you.