Ruth Clarke - Systemic Psychotherapy

UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) Registered

I offer Private Therapy Services for these Issues

My Therapy Therapeutic Approaches

Gender

Clinical Experience in Therapy

What to Expect during Therapy

My practice is based on systemic psychotherapy. This is a relationship therapy. It means that whether I am working with an individual, couple, or family, I try to help people to understand what is going on for themselves in terms of the relationships in their lives.

We are all born into relationships. We have relationships with people, certainly, but we also have relationships with ideas and beliefs; with experiences and behaviours; with our past and our future; with our class, our gender, our bodies, our culture. The list is endless.

In many ways it is our relationships that define us, that create our sense of who we are. Therefore when we experience problems with who we are it is often useful to look at these relationships.

My style is conversational and I ask questions designed to help people think through their concerns.

Systemic psychotherapy can be of benefit to individuals, couples, and families. In working with children I make the sessions playful where possible and accessible to their level of understanding. Depending upon individual need I can offer a short-term intervention focusing on a specific issue, or longer-term, more exploratory intervention.

An approach that I frequently use in conjunction with systemic psychotherapy is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). EMDR is a means of assisting the brain to reprocess disturbing thoughts and memories that are causing an individual to experience problems in their day to day life.

In the UK EMDR is recommended as the treatment of choice for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) and by the CREST report in Northern Ireland.

The distressing effects of trauma (such as flashbacks, disturbing thoughts and negative feelings) can be alleviated by stimulating the eye movements of an individual while they focus on the traumatic event.

In this way it is similar to the effects of REM sleep, which helps us to process the events of the day.

However, despite its name, EMDR does not rely solely on eye movements. Similar effects can be achieved either by tapping alternate sides of the body, or by producing sounds alternately in each ear. It is the alternate stimulation of each side of the brain (bi-lateral stimulation), rather than the eye movements specifically, that produces the therapeutic effect.

Since its beginnings EMDR has evolved into a treatment for a wide range of emotional problems including Anxiety, Stress, Panic attacks, Anger problems, Depression, Performance anxiety, Phobias, Obsessive compulsive disorders, Low self-esteem, Relationship and sexual problems, and treating the affects of childhood neglect and abuse.

EMDR is also used as an effective performance enhancer in both sports and the arts.

Clinical Qualifications in Therapy

Additional Information