Psychotherapy based in Sunbury on Thames, Surrey with Nina Mohammed

Psychotherapy

The main purpose of psychotherapy is to bring awareness and understanding to your life, primarily to enable acceptance and change where needed. Together we will discuss issues and difficulties and look to the underlying reasons as to why you may be struggling. Foremost, however, the sessions will be a safe place where you can heard, acknowledged and feel supported.

Alongside psychotherapy, I am qualified in a variety of other therapeutic approaches and, depending on what is needed, integrate different methods to suit your needs but I do predominantly use IFS, as I have found it to be the most profoundly effective model.

IFS

Internal Family Systems, or IFS for short, is a therapeutic model that separates the mind into different parts using a non-judgemental and compassionate approach.

Most of us can relate to having a critical or worried voice in our heads at times; in IFS that is what would be called a “part”, and these parts have their own thoughts and ideas about what we should be thinking or doing. Some parts might take on a protective role, like managing or controlling our behaviour, while others carry burdens from past wounds.

Often parts can get into conflict with each other, so there will be one voice with an opinion about a situation and then another part with an opposing point of view. Take, for example, an anxious part that is worried about an upcoming event and another part judging the anxious part for being worried about it, causing the part to become even more stressed and anxious.

I guide you into your internal world to meet these parts so you can create an internal map, gaining awareness of the way you are in the world, how you treat yourself and others. I also guide you to help heal the parts that carry wounds that may have got stuck playing out behaviour they took on to cope in their environment, typically learnt in childhood.

Each part that is met and helped to transform integrates back into your system, so the unhelpful behaviour changes at the root and you become increasingly more Self-led.

Another key aspect of IFS is the idea that we all have a “Self”. This is the essence of who you are beneath all the different parts and is often described as a deep well of inner wisdom. It is your “true authentic” state of being, characterised by qualities such as calmness, compassion, clarity, calm, curiosity, courage, confidence, creativity, connection and presence.

In IFS we work to build a relationship between Self and parts, ultimately allowing Self to lead and live our lives as our authentic, peaceful selves.