When you think about home what do you think about? What important qualities does your home need to have to feel at home in it? Who would you invite into your home?
Therapy is a place where you can come home to your emotions and how you are feeling in your body. After all, unless we have a well-resourced emotional basement within us, we won’t have the resilience to struggle through our everyday stresses. With that I have embarked on a new journey stepping back into being a student again studying working relationally with body psychotherapy. This is allowing me to integrate body work into my therapeutic practice. As a trauma therapist, I know how important it is for my clients to be able to be present with what is going on in their bodies (their emotional home) and thus picking up clues on how safe they feel in the world around them, identifying what is a present and past feeling.
Physically returning home can be a difficult theme for many of us, as returning home back to our home country or returning to our original family or care givers home can make us rekindle with childhood memories or experiences that can be difficult to think about. Or there may be aspects of us that our family or carer have had difficult fully accepting and this may have strained the adult relationship you have with them.
In therapy returning home can be a metaphor for many things. When I carry out a client assessment, I often ask my clients where do you go to feel safe in the world. For clients, this may be the first opportunity they have had to think about: ‘where do I feel safe?’. Clients are often surprised when the response is somewhere other than their home, family or loved ones. Some clients say that nowhere feels safe in the world around them right now and this might be what has brought them to my therapy room. This can also empower the client to seek the changes they are looking for in life; as we all have the right to feel safe, respected and loved.
After returning to London the place I call home, it has taken me about nine months to settle back into living in London & London life. Returning to my own home in North London and therapeutic practice in East Finchley & London Bridge, all I can say is that I am very grateful for being back home & for the support that I have received to resettle back in. Being back I have come to realise what I love about living in this major city. I also know that for some living in such a large city can present issues of social isolation, loneliness, drugs, alcohol and social anxiety. What may make living at home & life in generally very difficult for some.
Please know that my counselling door is always open if you need support.
For what is left of 2017, I am looking forward to opening my doors to new clients, welcoming returning clients and new projects beginning. I also welcome other organisations, therapists and supervisors contacting me to see how we can look at ways of working together, as we work better together!
What do you need to feel at home in your home and at home in your body?
Blog originally published here.