Nick Swan

I am a fully qualified and accredited psychotherapist and Supervisor registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy(UKCP). I offer short term counselling or longer term depth psychotherapy in a safe, confidential and respectful space. I have worked as a counsellor in a variety of settings and held a private psychotherapy practice for  23 years. I enjoy working with a wide range of people and have gained experience of a breadth of issues that human beings can meet in life.

Spiritual and existential crises. I am also interested in early attachment issues, the Primal period of the first 18 months of life and its ongoing influence on our sense of self and way of being in relationship. I am also drawn to working with how our body holds both our distress and our developmental journey. I am a qualified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I am very interested in issues of 'midlife', in part because of being in midlife myself and also because of the radical reorientation that sometimes occurs in this period, which if handled with awareness can open up ourselves to renewed meaning, maturity and spiritual opening.

Initial Meeting

Choosing a therapist that you feel you can work with is an important process and with this in mind I offer a initial meeting to see if I might be someone you could speak with about what is going on in your life, and to explore the possibility of our working together. In this, I would be listening carefully to what is bringing you to therapy and what you would like to happen as a result of your engaging with therapeutic work. I would be giving you some information about the way I tend to work and there would be an opportunity for questions. As this is an introductory meeting and not a therapy session as such, there is no charge for this time. Should we jointly decide to work together I usually ask for an initial commitment of six sessions. Sessions are weekly and of an hours duration. Should we decide I am not the right person for you, I would be happy to provide details of other therapists who might suit you better.

A brief overview of how I work and see the therapeutic process.

In the sessions, what we explore would be entirely up to you. My role as therapist would be to respond as skilfully and appropriately to both you as a person and the issues you are bringing. I tend to work in a warm, engaged way with the intention of bringing as much awareness as I can to what's happening in our moment to moment work together. Therapy is very much a collaborative enquiry to help you make sense of your experience of living, both in the here and now and in terms of how your past history impacts on your current life and your sense of how you might shape your future.
Over time you may find yourself becoming clearer about your feelings, your relationships and your way of being in the world. I see therapy as an opportunity to reflect, take stock of where you are in your life, to explore at depth your experiences of being you, with a supportive other. I do not see therapy as a quick fix, a solution to all your problems as ultimately life is not a problem to be solved more a experience to be lived. Psychotherapy helps explore your lived experience with an aim of increasing awareness and the quality of relationship you have both to yourself and to others. In this, you may find yourself better able to deal with difficult feelings and situations, handling life in an emotionally wiser way and freeing up energy  enabling you to move forward. For many, a renewed sense of purpose, meaning, and a clearer sense of identity are essential parts of the work.

Theoretical orientation

My main training is in Core process psychotherapy. The term Core refers to a belief that at the heart of ourselves is an open and clear awareness that has the capacity for joy and empathic open hearted connection with others. The term "Process" refers to the stream of immediate experience - thoughts, feelings, memories, images etc, that we associate with a sense of self and can often have difficulty with. Put simply, Core Process work, entails bringing the joint awareness of therapist and client to the 'process' arising in relationship, such that it can be known, felt and let go of.
Core process is based on a depth understanding of human personality process and human potential. It is part of a tradition of depth psychotherapy, meaning it is open to explore and reclaim areas of our consciousness, psyche and relational patterns that we lack a conscious connection to; that maybe are unavailable, not fully felt or otherwise out of awareness. This can lead to a greater sense of wholeness or integration. Influences in depth psychotherapy include the psychoanalytic tradition, the work of Jung and existential psychotherapy. Core process might also be termed a 'psycho-spiritual' psychotherapy meaning that if called upon, it can expand our capacity to go beyond our conventional ego or identification with a narrow sense of self towards a larger dimension of being. This can be important as often the dilemmas we face in life are beyond a narrow psychological focus and can be ethical, existential, or spiritual in nature. In my own training background is a grounding in the practices of mindfulness and compassionate awareness derived from the Buddhist tradition which support a depth of presence with which to engage in therapeutic work.
Other supports and influences in offering therapy is my own therapeutic work on myself, which includes in historical order : Person centred therapy, transpersonal psychotherapy and in the journey of my own psychotherapy training through to graduation and accreditation, eight years of Core process work, grounding me thoroughly in the form of therapy I practice. Subsequent to this I have worked with a Jungian analyst which has been helpful in exploring the more symbolic aspects of experience especially as it surfaces in dreams. I have also engaged in body psychotherapy, and am a qualified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, which addresses Trauma with the approach developed by Peter Levine. I have also done extensive training over recent years in Diana Fosha's AEDP model of working with developmental Trauma. In short I have interest in and experience of a range of therapy models, but would hold that the most important element of therapy is the relationship that is built between therapist and client, and that the theoretical stuff, whilst important is secondary.

About me.

In my twenties I trained as a social worker specialising in the areas of mental health and addiction. Post qualifying, I worked in the addiction field for eight years, mainly within a counselling role and during this time I also trained as a psychotherapist.
I also, since my twenties have had a interest in Buddhism and the practice of mindfulness and emotional positivity taught in the Buddhist tradition. I gravitated towards the Core process training because it is in large part a exploration of what happens when you take a depth of mindful awareness into relationship with another. The mix of awareness and relationship still facinates me and I continue to wonder at the insights, transformation and twists in the road that unfolds from this.
I have also worked in higher education as a student counsellor, which led me to deepening skills in shorter term work. Over recent years I have been working solely in private practice as a psychotherapist. People come to me with a range of issues from anxiety, depression and relationship issues to severe trauma, confusion over identity, sexuality and loss or bereavement. For some, there is not a particular 'issue', more a valuing of having a space to reflect upon their lives and get a better sense of their way of being in the world. Please visit my website for more details