Dan’s approach

Relationship conflict:

As a qualified family therapist, I can help couples and families communicate within an entirely different space. I can help people recognize the positive intent that underlies family members’ actions while acknowledging the hurt that is often caused. E.g. a parent getting angry at their school-refusing teenager because they are worried about their education. Or a person shutting down during conflict with their partner because they’re afraid of things becoming too heightened.

I can help couples and families understand why their efforts to solve problems only seem to make things worse, and how to bring forward their natural capacities for compassion, curiosity and loving connection. My firm view is that, if people knew how to get their needs met without hurting anyone, they would.

A crucial element in relationship repair is people’s ability to communicate their views while also being able to listen to others. We all know what happens when we shout, blame and cut off from each other, things get worse or simply stay the same. A primary goal of therapy is to help people reduce blame so they are less likely to get defensive or angry and more likely to listen and develop new understandings.           

Mental Health:

I can assist people with many different mental health presentations such as anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, aggression and eating disorders.

My belief is that trauma underlies most, if not all, personal mental health issues and relationship difficulties. Whether it’s ‘Big T’ trauma - instances of abuse, traumatic events etc, or less obvious ‘little t’ traumas - shame, humiliation, emotional neglect, criticism, unattuned parenting etc.

Human beings express anger, defensiveness or dissociate because of what happened to them in the past, not because there is anything inherently wrong with them. People often get aggressive or avoidant not for the purpose of hurting others, but because they are trying to create some sense of safety for themselves in the moment, despite these behaviors often causing harm.

Individuals:

Aside from my family therapy training, I am very comfortable working with individuals to address personal mental health and trauma and I’m passionate about two modalities in particular:

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an empowering form of psychotherapy that is remarkable in it’s ability to help people process and overcome trauma and connect with themselves and others with clarity, calm, connectedness and compassion. IFS recognizes that all human beings are multiple i.e. we all have ‘parts’ that often dictate our actions - angry parts, critical parts, defensive parts, people-pleasing parts, addiction parts etc. While these parts can be effective in helping us create safety or manage anxiety in the short term, they often have destructive consequence in our lives and relationships. IFS helps people connect with these parts, make peace with them and open up amazing possibilities for healing.

Havening technique (similar in effect to EMDR) helps process trauma without necessarily talking about the traumatic events themselves. Instead, it combines the body’s natural healing power with recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience to decouple traumatic memories from the negative emotions encoded within them.

More information:

Internal Family Systems (IFS) - https://ifs-institute.com/

Havening Technique - https://www.havening.org/