Suzanne Robinson

What Might Bring You To Therapy

We all go through difficult periods in our lives, and it's usually these difficulties that bring people to therapy. Some people decide to see a therapist because they're experiencing a low mood or have become dissatisfied with some aspect of their lives for reasons they may or may not fully understand. Some come because they're having having trouble in their relationships or because a relationship has ended. Some are having problems at work. For some, life has become more difficult. They are living with the terrible pain of depression or struggling with anxiety, social anxiety or other mental health problems.

Therapy Can Help

Wherever you find yourself right now, therapy can help you. I came to do this work because my own therapy was so incredibly helpful to me, and the research backs up my experience. Therapy can help us feel stronger and more able to cope with life, to better understand and accept ourselves, even our fears and shortcomings. It can help us change how we feel, how we think about ourselves and others, and how we behave. It can help us strengthen our relationships with ourselves and others and make a better life for ourselves.  

So we start where we are. And we build from there.  


How I Work

I am trained in Person-Centred Therapy and Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). My first and most fundamental goal is to be warm and authentic with you and to accept you completely as you are, without judgement. I will work collaboratively with you to explore the issues you are having difficulties with and to help you discover more about yourself - your thoughts, feelings and experiences, to develop more self-acceptance, and to make changes that will enable you to grow and feel more contented and fulfilled in your life.

The theoretical underpinnings of EFT hold that emotions are of fundamental importance because they are adaptive - emotions tell us what is important to us, what we want or need, and what we need to do to get our needs met. Yet sometimes, often as a result of painful experiences in the past, we develop maladaptive emotions. Thus, we have emotional experiences to present situations that are not only painful, but are also maladaptive in our current life context, meaning we can't trust them to tell us what action is appropriate to the fulfilment of our needs. In fact, maladaptive emotions often cause us to act in ways that prevent us from getting our needs met and that cause difficulties in our relationships with others.

I will work with you to help you become more aware of and able to express your emotions, where necessary to tolerate and regulate your more difficult emotions, to reflect on your emotions to understand and make sense of them in light of your life experiences, and to change or transform maladaptive emotions to more adaptive ones.


A Bit About Me

I'm an American transplant in Glasgow with a background in civil/human rights law and in politics. While doing this work, I often found myself loving much of what I did and why I was doing it but not the environment in which it was done. The most meaningful part of my work for me was the time I spent with my clients, listening to them as they expressed their concerns and fears and helping them see the strengths they had that would help them achieve their goals, despite their fears. So my career change makes a lot of sense to me.

I believe it is really important that you find the right therapist - someone you feel comfortable with, someone you can come to trust, so I offer a free initial 30 minute appointment so we can meet each other and see if it feels like we'd be able to work together in a way that would be helpful for you.

Thereafter, my fee is £65 for a 50 minute session. 

Because I don't want cost to be a barrier to those who need help but are struggling financially, I reserve a number of appointments which I can offer at a concession.  

Membership
British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy