Jan Sheppard

I am a highly experienced individual, couple and family therapist. I have 25 years experience in both the NHS and the private sector and have taught psychotherapy at some of the UK's most prestigious training institutions. I am currently working in full-time private practice.

I work within the existential tradition, which takes a philosophical approach to psychotherapy and counselling, aiming to help people live more deliberately and purposefully in their lives. It can help clarify your understanding of yourself and your life circumstances. It can assist you through a specific life crisis and in becoming better at understanding repetitive and emotionally destructive patterns of relating which you may be caught up in.

The emphasis throughout our work is on you and how you see and experience the world. You will have an opportunity to tell your story and gradually come to a more satisfactory interpretation of your current predicaments until you find a way through them. The objective is for you to become more honest with yourself and more in tune with both your limitations and possibilities. By paying attention to what is of most concern to you personally we will aim to bring your life back into harmony with your aspirations so that you become more able to live your life to the full. This means understanding where you are at before establishing where you want to go and how you might get there.

You will be expected to freely discuss everything that is of concern to you in your everyday experience. You need to be prepared to verbally express your emotions, sensations, thoughts, memories, dreams, fantasies, expectations, fears and hopes without reserve, in order to get a clear picture of your way of being in the world and understand and re-organise your life accordingly. The process of existential therapy consists of an engaged and constructive discussion of past events, from which new commitments for the future will emerge. The aim is to facilitate reflective self-examination in order to bring about change.  The setting is intimate and cooperative and conversations are confidential.

1. Work concerns: Work is an important aspect of our lives and if your job is unsatisfying it can affect the rest of your life. It could be that you need to look at the relationships you have at work to see if they might be improved. You may wish to consider a complete change of occupation and look at this in both a structured and creative manner.
2. Family: Sometimes families can be a safe harbour after dangerous seas but often families are the dangerous seas. How you were brought up can affect you later in life and your self-esteem may well rely on your family of origin, as do your relationships. Looking at our past may help us to move on and find positive ways at looking at negative experiences. Couples often have quite different expectations of relationships and just looking at that can help.
3. Friends and Relationships: Our friends and colleagues are an important part of our lives and yet we sometimes do not give them the consideration they deserve. London can be a lonely place and some support and help can bring about a more rewarding social life. Whether it is difficulties you are having with old friends or that you are shy about making new ones, therapy can help.
4. Turning Points: We can underestimate the difficulties that occur at the turning points in our lives. Even events that seem to be pleasant such as having a baby or a new relationship can be very demanding. We all know that growing older can feel painful and we dread the mid-life crisis rather than see it as an opportunity. After a bereavement we usually need a period of rest and mourning and it can seem difficult to get back into the swing of life again. This can be a time when life seems to lose its meaning and when a therapist can gently restore a sense of purpose.

My fee is £90 per 50 min session for individuals, £100 for couples and £115 for families.

I begun my professional life training as a speech therapist, however from experiences gained working within mental health projects and residential psychiatric settings, I became interested in the possibility of bringing a psychological and particularly a philosophical perspective to bear more fully within the work I was doing. I re-trained as a psychotherapist and have since worked extensively within various teaching and training organizations as well as in the NHS, and I am now in private practice full-time working largely with professionals from the city, and local residents of Walthamstow. My practice is based in E17 and E14.

Feel free to call me with any questions you might have and to refer to my web-site to find out more about myself and the work I do in Walthamstow and Canary Wharf.