“Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge.”

– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

My Therapeutic Approach

My Basic Philosophy

Lale Akhrass, Integrative Psychotherapist:

“I strongly believe that you are unique and have a right to be valued, accepted, respected and loved. You do not have to suffer and deserve a chance to find happiness and peace within yourself and with the other people who matter to you.  To thrive, you need to feel safe and secure within yourself and in your relationships.  If this is missing or compromised because of painful or traumatic experiences, then you won’t be able to come home to yourself or be well in the presence of others. Over time this can have a debilitating impact on your psychological health and possibly on your physical well-being.

To manage these issues, you have adopted mechanisms and strategies that may eventually hinder you rather than help. Unresolved painful experiences are being replayed without conscious thought or memory, causing havoc in your life and relationships.  That is until they are understood, worked through, and resolved.

This is why if you ignore problems, they are very likely to surface in your life at a later stage. Experience has taught me that if we want to change, we are able to… and scientific research on brain plasticity supports this too.”

 

My Personalised Approach

Lale Akhrass, Integrative Psychotherapist:

“I work respectfully with all my clients to help restore psychological health.  My style can be described as attuned, warm, empathic, open minded and exploratory. Whilst working on a particular issue or goal, I take my cue from the client to decide on the appropriate interventions.  I adopt more of a direct stance if I have concerns about risk. The main treatment modalities and perspectives I use include:

  • Whole-person approach
  • Exploring attachment patterns
  • Emotional regulation
  • Principles of body-based psychotherapy
  • Trauma focused work
  • Principles of Jungian psychology
  • Principles of Developmental psychology
  • Play therapy
  • Sand tray therapy
  • Creative expressionism
  • Mindfulness
  • Psychoeducation
The Tree of Life – Gustav Klimt
What drives my work is desire to understand how you can overcome your psychological difficulties.  This enables you to create the life you want and to cope effectively with life’s inevitable challenges.  Informed by attachment theory, developmental psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, and affective neuroscience, I help clients develop compassionate self-awareness and insight.  I believe that the mind and body are interlinked.  As such, I also use body-oriented work to heal the body and mind together, particularly in cases of developmental or other trauma, which is held in the fabric of our muscles and tissue.

I provide psychoeducation to clients, and explain in a factual and age appropriate manner relevant information about topics such as child development, attachment theory, emotional regulation, the brain and nervous system, unconscious process, and the importance of grounding and resourcing.  This helps to understand and manage the difficulties which are being experienced and to support the recovery process.

If clients are taking medication, then I collaborate with psychiatrists.  I may even suggest a psychiatric assessment if the child, teenager or adult is experiencing depression, suicidal thinking or other severe symptoms.”