Spectrum Therapy
For more information call + 44 (0) 208 341 2277
For more information call + 44 (0) 208 341 2277
The term psychotherapy has been given many definitions because there are so many different approaches. But there are common principles that apply throughout most of the disciplines.
Psychotherapy takes place between a trained psychotherapist and a client. The sessions are held in a private and confidential setting. The initial task of the therapist and client is to establish through conversation what brings the client to therapy and what they would like to achieve from it. It may be to do with symptoms relating to stress, behavioural problems, relational issues, health problems or concerns about personal growth and development.
Back to topThis is actually a subjective question and therefore has many answers. Below are a few examples of what has motivated some people to seek psychotherapy.
Often people feel they are not right with themselves but do not know why. Talking with someone who is trained to listen can provide a space in which clients can hear themselves talk about and reflect upon what they are saying. This builds a self-connection in which people can develop a sense of connectedness to who they are and what they are experiencing.
One of the most painful experiences is to feel isolated when we are in pain. This amplifies states of anxiety, causes panic attacks and contributes toward feelings of anger, depression and loneliness. We often pressure ourselves excessively to manage on our own. Talking to a professional is not without its pressures but it can provide a space to end our isolation and talk about what we are going through. The relief of talking to another person who is outside of the issues we are dealing with often helps clarify our experience and in turn stimulate new hope.
Pain and emotional crisis are certainly major motivating factors in bringing people to therapy but they are not the only reasons. Major events and life transitions can test our personal resources and we can find ourselves disoriented and not knowing how to respond to changing circumstances. Psychotherapy can help you through these times and help you develop the skills you need to manage what you are going through.
Back to topWhile psychotherapy and counselling both offer short-term and brief therapy, psychotherapy and counselling trainings are different. Generally, counselling trainings are shorter and tend to be solution based, they focus on setting goals for solving a range of problems and managing the counselling relationship.
Psychotherapy training takes many years because it requires an understanding of developmental processes over time. It focuses on the clients’ long-term relationships with themselves and others which emerge and are discussed within the therapeutic sessions. Psychotherapy is also working with the deeper layers of how a person is present and how it relates to the past, present and future.
Back to topThe work we do is confidential to the client and the therapist. However, in order for psychotherapists to maintain a healthy perspective, they are all required to participate in supervision. In this process clients are not identified. Psychotherapists are legally obliged to break confidentiality only if they consider that clients are in danger of causing serious harm to themselves or others.
Back to topAt Spectrum each of the practitioners decide their own fee and time structure. Fees range from £55 to £140 per session and session times range from forty-five minutes to an hour. We also have a sliding-scale low cost programme and fees are negotiated between the client and the therapist. To enquire about low cost therapy please contact the Spectrum office.
Back to topWe provide brief and longer term therapy. We contract to work at a pace that is appropriate therapeutically and in terms of financial resources.
Our therapists have regular review sessions with their clients to discuss how the therapy is developing and what value it is having. In this way the usefulness of the therapeutic relationship is always under review and the decision to end or continue on-goingly negotiated.
Back to topPsychotherapy has a problem-solving function out of which clients learn to manage themselves in different ways and form new perspectives on themselves and their world. It also has a healing and educational value and is concerned with how clients are in themselves and how they are managing in general.
In order to solve a problem something new has to be learned or something already known needs to be applied. In this way problem solving can be a formative opportunity in which the client can learn more about themselves, grow new skills and develop new perspectives. For this reason Spectrum therapists continually discuss with their clients how the therapeutic experience is being translated into their day-to-day lives.
Psychotherapy is most productive when both the therapist and the client feel they can discuss what is happening within the relationship, this way the client can learn from their experience of the therapeutic relationship about how they function in relationships in general and integrate what they learn into their day-to-day relationships.
Back to topSpectrum is humanistic in it's approach. Two important elements of humanistic psychotherapy are personal responsibility and its connection to self-empowerment, and working in the here and now. Working with the individual's actual present-tense experience allows for exploration of how the past and possibilities for the future exist within the physical and emotional structures of how a person is present, how this shapes their relationships and how they are in the world. Spectrum's approach emphasises the relationship between the therapist and client as significant in the process of problem solving and creating conditions for personal growth and development.
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