Darryl’s approach is based on safety and trust. It has been shown that people heal more quickly when they experience loving kindness, empathy and compassion. So Darryl’s first focus is to listen deeply to what his clients want to share. This deep listening involves not just hearing the words, but what is happening between the words and what is happening for the client when they are sharing their story. Often people are not clear about why they have come to therapy and so it is important that there be space for the process to unfold. At Lifeflow Counselling Fremantle, Darryl provides the safety, space and support for this to happen.
Research is increasingly teaching us that there is a strong connection between the body and the mind. We are learning that we can't always resolve emotional issues by using only our minds. Feelings and memories are held in the body as well. Somatic (body/mind) therapies can be very effective at resolving trauma and strong emotions such as anger, sadness, anxiety, regret and grief.
Science is also telling us that we use our conscious mind 5-10% of the time and so much of our daily lives is lived out with our unconscious in the driver’s seat. Trauma, strong emotions and life patterns are stored in our unconscious and so it makes sense to deal with these things in our unconscious. We have all experienced trying to figure something in our mind only to feel frustrated. We then sit with it or sleep on it and suddenly the solution appears. This is because we gave space for the unconscious to do it’s work. So much of Darryl’s success is from helping clients to connect with the unconscious where the issue resides.
Many of the things that bring people to counselling are really symptoms of some kind. Issues such as depression, anxiety, anger, sadness and so on are what is happening to us at the time. But the reality is that these issues are just symptoms, often resulting from some earlier distressing event (trauma) or due to some ongoing discomfort, abuse or powerlessness. We feel the anxiety (symptom) because the original event that caused the distress still lingers in our unconscious. We can’t “just stop it” by using our conscious mind. The two main ways of dealing with these things in the unconscious are with Mindfulness and Deep Imagining.
Mindfulness:
Mindfulness is a non-judgemental way of observing ourselves moment to moment allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of how we behave in everyday situations. With the use of mindfulness we bring awareness to our behaviour and can start to create a little more space between something happening to us and how we respond. Mindfulness also allows us to connect with the unconscious deeper feelings which helps us see the real underlying causes of the symptoms we have.
Deep Imagining:
The language of the unconscious is imagination. Darryl uses a technique called TRTP Therapy (The Richards Trauma Process). This is a specific process which can be very effective using deep imagining to help resolve the underlying causes of distressing events and consists of usually only 3-4 sessions (of approx 90 minutes each). The process changes the negative unconscious core beliefs to the positive and deals with the distressing events in a way that stops the triggering that causes the symptoms to continue. People can then return to calm and start to consciously create a more peaceful and fulfilling life. For many people this process is life changing.