In a world full of surface swimmers, be a deep diver.

That emptiness you feel inside, the one you keep trying to fill with your Insta feed, food, wine, new clothes, that’s the place depth psychotherapy can help you gently explore and move through.

In 2019, life for most of us is faster, more image-based and less connected than ever before.

Sure, we have access to incredible technologies, but face-planting our phones, being constantly busy and never really stopping to check in with ourselves or others, creates a lack of connection.

Psychotherapy, particularly depth psychotherapy, is the antithesis of living on the surface of life.

What is depth psychotherapy?

Depth psychotherapy works to bring unconscious beliefs, feelings and memories that are impacting your current life, into your awareness. Once you are aware of those hidden forces, they no longer have the same power over you.

The more aware you become of what lies beneath your surface, the more choice you have in what you believe and how you respond to your present moment experience.

Depth psychotherapy is about finding ways to feel more solid in your being and more settled in your body.

Rather than skimming the surface of the water, working on short-term strategies for changing your thoughts, a depth psychotherapist is prepared to swim with you, further into the depths, in order to uncover hidden fears and lost gems.

Such discoveries may require more of you, however the rewards tend to ripple out into all areas of your life.

You Are More Than Your Head

Many depth psychotherapies recognise you are more than your head. There is an active recognition that who you are is made up of your head, body and soul. That you exist in relation to your environment and your relationships.

Psychotherapies grounded in trauma theory and practice – such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing and Hakomi – bring the body into therapy and healing.

Such therapies understand that many of your problems cannot be ‘fixed’ by merely changing your thoughts.

This is especially true of current life struggles which originated in the past, such as childhood emotional neglect, physical and psychological abuse and traumatic events.

Trauma psychotherapies work not only on strategies to cope in the present, but by healing the roots of the past.

As the world’s leading trauma researchers and therapists learn more and more about the nature of trauma, its impacts and how it is healed, the more important body-based psychotherapy becomes.

Trauma cannot be healed through thought-management alone. It is a full-bodied experience and requires a therapist who has undergone specialised, extensive training in working with the whole of a person.

Benefits Of Seeing A Psychotherapist:

• Shifting anxiety, depression and low self-worth through understanding why they arose in the first place.
• Learning to sit with uncomfortable or painful emotions, rather than avoiding them. In this way you have the opportunity to face and work through the places where you’re stuck, rather than pushing them away.
• Working through the roots of your struggles, instead of just putting a bandaid on them. Rather than just finding ways to cope with the symptoms, we address the underlying causes.
• Experiencing a genuine connection with another human who really sees you and hears you.
• Learning to reconnect with your self fully.
• Engaging more fully in life – having more flexibility and a greater sense of possibility.
• Becoming more aware of your patterns of behaviour and where you get stuck; and the ability to choose something different.
• Greater self-compassion for who you are and how you came to be the person you are.
• Developing a greater capacity to stay centred in your self in the face of conflict or disapproval.
• Connecting soulfully with yourself, your therapist and those important to you.

Reasons You Might See A Psychotherapist:

• To heal trauma from a vast array of causes such as: sexual abuse, a car accident, surgery, childhood emotional neglect, domestic violence, witnessing or hearing about a distressing event, bullying, micro-aggressions, stigma, or many, many more.
• To understand and work through your anxiety or depression. Through working out the message your suffering is trying to tell you, you become more empowered to make changes that are in the best interest of your own wellbeing.
• You struggle to make life work for you. You find it difficult to motivate yourself, to meet your own goals, to find a job you like, to stay in relationships, to have supportive friendships, to assert yourself or to like yourself.
• You feel there must be more to life, but you don’t know how to find what’s missing.
• You struggle with low self-worth. Maybe you don’t feel you’re good enough for the life you’d really like to have. Maybe you even self-sabotage when good things do come your way.
• You struggle with perfectionism. Ironically, many people who struggle with perfectionism reject this notion, as they don’t believe they’re perfect enough to have perfectionism. Nothing you do ever feels good enough. You know you could do better if you just tried harder. You compare yourself to others and tell yourself, ‘they have done it, so what’s wrong with me?’
• You are burnt out. Most of your time and energy goes into taking care of others. Their needs feel more important than yours. However there never seems to be enough time or energy left for you.
• There’s an emptiness inside of you and you know it’s there, but you’re terrified to look at it. You’ll do anything to avoid it, because it feels so yuck. Maybe you organise your life so you’re never alone. Or you avoid that emptiness through constantly checking your phone, drinking, eating, shopping or having sex.
• You find decision making excruciating. On all levels of life. You know it holds you back, but you just don’t know which choice is the right one. What if you make the wrong choice? Every decision has equal pros and cons. It can leave you immobilised. Or being forced to make a rushed decision at the last minute, because you held off for so long.

Counselling With Soul

Depth psychotherapy is not just about solving problems and healing emotional pain, it is an opportunity to learn more about yourself and get in touch with the deeper you.

Depth psychotherapy connects to the bones of life, to the heart, the gut, the soul. In a world that places so much emphasis on image, psychotherapy is a soft, accepting place to land, to expand, to let go.

Make An Appointment To See Toni Jackson For Depth Psychotherapy

If you would like to work through your anxiety, depression, self-worth, body image, sense of self, or struggles related to your past, please contact Toni Jackson for enquiries and appointments via the contact form below.

For a free 15 minute phone consultation, to discuss your situation and see how Toni can support you, please phone 0439 995 302 (Australia only).

Toni Jackson is a Psychotherapist specialising in trauma, anxiety and body image. She is a Gestalt Therapist, body-centred psychotherapist, creative therapist and HAES practitioner. Toni works in Fremantle and Mundaring, Perth, Western Australia, and also provides online counselling.

Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash