To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Why Men’s Therapy?
The quotation above from Oscar Wilde might help you answer this question — perhaps you’ve decided it’s time for you to truly LIVE, not merely exist?
Or flourish rather than languish?
After all, a mountain exists. A tin of baked beans exists! Surely we can do better than that?!
Here’s another question you might have asked yourself: “Is there more to life than what I’m experiencing now?”
It’s a question that has come to mind for me many times in my life, and, to the best of my ability, I’ve explored what “more life” might mean.
Along the way, one thing became clear to me: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
The fact is that an awful lot goes on beneath our conscious awareness. The image here of an iceberg is a good analogy —80% of the iceberg floats UNDER the surface of the ocean, completely out of sight. It’s there, but we can’t see it. It’s beyond our conscious awareness.
This is where a third person can be invaluable. A men’s therapist, perhaps? If you can’t see what you can’t see, perhaps they can help? Therapists are trained to “see beneath the surface” of the mind, and they can help you see there.
I work with you to create a space where it’s OK to delve into “stuff” that’s holding you back but you never quite understood how or why.
We share and discuss various insights with the goal of building your awareness. The sense of freedom — and relief — that can come from dipping into this world is hard to describe until you have experienced it! Regrettably, most people (especially men) get through their entire life without ever knowing.
And it might not surprise you that this process can take a bit of time. After all, you’ve been living with your current life awareness for many years now!
How does it work?
We meet on a regular basis, usually weekly, fortnightly, or every 3 weeks.
I am based in my Northcote home — just over the harbour bridge, 7 minutes from Ponsonby.
Appointments are available Tuesday to Thursday, with start times between 10 am and 4:30 pm, with after hours by arrangement.
We meet face to face. Skype or Zoom are options, as is, if arranged in advance, “walk & talk” in a nearby park.
Every counsellor or therapist works with one or more frameworks or therapeutic models (also known as “modalities”).
The framework I use mostly is TA, Transactional Analysis, founded in the 1960s by Eric Berne. It’s based on Berne’s observations of interactions (which he called “transactions”) between people.
TA became popular in the 1970s, entering the lexicon of the time with phrases such as “I’m OK, You’re OK,” and “Games People Play” and the concept of “Parent | Adult | Child.” TA continues to be popular for one-to-one therapy, and is now used by businesses to understand dynamics among their people.
I find TA a very useful model to identify and clarify different aspects of the human experience, and my clients find it approachable too. It’s “plain language,” and definitely no psychotherapy mumbo-jumbo.
At the end of the day, it’s the relationship we build that makes the difference, not TA!
What do you need to bring?
That’s quite simple.
- An open heart and a desire to explore how much more you might be able to get out of life—your life!
- Willingness to (at least contemplate) change, realising that change and growth can be hard work.
- Willingness to invest some time and some money!