Bruce Stevenson. M.Sc. Dip.Psych (UKCP) - Psychotherapist in Dulwich, South London
Feeling down, stressed or out of touch with yourself ? I offer brief or long term therapy for individuals. I have been a psychotherapist in the integrative section of the UKCP for eighteen years but also use some of the most effective current therapies and techniques.
Call me on 0208 766 7324 (or click the contact me link above to send me a message) to discuss your needs...
Do your reactions run your life?
Do you ever:
- Feel worthless, or shamed ?
- Go blank?
- Eat or drink too much?
- Need to be in control of everything?
- Feel run by anxiety?
- Feel depressed?
- Feel run by anger?
- Problems with relationships?
- Feel torn between different parts of yourself?
When we are run by reactions like these, we feel like we are being taken over - and we are. The way back into the driver's seat, is to be empowered to find out what the reaction is trying to achieve. I can help you tune into the reaction and understand directly what your mind is on about. As you understand, you are able to seperate from the reaction, so that you can recover all the resources of your natural Self. In seperating from what is really a defence, you get to know a more vulnerable part of you, (which the reaction has been attempting to protect), but from the clarity and mindfulness that is your natural Self. Mindfulness - your own power of knowing - has the capacity to heal your vulnerable parts and to see things in perspective. IFS has developed an efficient way to reveal and set to one side the barriers to mindfulness, so that it becomes possible to heal the psyche in a much easier way than has hitherto been possible. I usually charge £45 per hour but can be persuaded up or down according to circumstances.... Call me, or email me to find out more....
For more about this read the section on IFS...
As Goethe wrote, 'When you trust yourself, you will know how to live.'
To put the matter in a different way, this is excerpted from pathwork lecture 189: "To the degree that struggle and tension exist in a personality, the various aspects of consciousness will be at odds with one another. You who are unaware of the meaning of the struggle are trying to identify with one or several of these aspects of consciousness without knowing what the true self is, where it is located, or how it can be found in this maze of discord. You wonder if you are your best qualities, or if you are your over-severe conscience which annihilates you for your negative traits. Or are you perhaps the destructive demon within you? Which is your best self? Is it your rage at the demon in you or your total negation of its existence? Whether individuals know it or not, this inner struggle and search is ongoing, and the more conscious the struggle is, the better. Any path of self-development must sooner or later come to terms with these questions -- with the deep problem of self-identity.
It is a human distortion to identify with any of the above-mentioned aspects. You are neither your negative traits nor your self-punishing superimposed conscience, nor even your positive traits. Even though you have managed to integrate the latter into the fullness of your being, this is not the same as identifying with them. It is more accurate to say that you are that part of you which managed this integration by determining, deciding, acting, thinking, and willing, so that you could absorb into your self what was previously an appendage. Each aspect of consciousness possesses a will of its own, as those of you who do the pathwork know. As long as you are blindly involved in the struggle and therefore submerged in it, each of these various aspects will control you in turn because the real self that could determine your identification differently has not yet found its power. Your blind involvement enslaves you and inactivates your creative energy. This missing sense of self
leads to despair."
