With Matthew Power
Focusing Oriented Psychotherapist
BCouns, BA, Grad Dip Ed, MACA
Based in Townsville. Available for Zoom appointments and Covid-safe outdoor appointments, which can be at your home or in a beautiful park with a couple of folding chairs, usually Anderson Gardens or The Palmetum
Contact: matthewpower@airpost.net 0439810160
~ To be respected and valued as a person.
~ To have choices around what happens in counselling.
~ To have your safety prioritised at all times, including your emotional safety in each moment.
~ To learn many safe ways to feel okay.
~ To grow in confidence around your own gifts, strengths and virtues.
~ To learn how to pause and find your balance in challenging moments.
~ To learn how to be "with" your intense emotions but not "in" them, so they no longer dominate you.
~ To experience compassionate acceptance of absolutely every part of you.
~ To grow in respect for everything that's helped you survive, and yet find new ways forward.
A starting point:
Matthew starts from the belief that you are the expert on your life and already have within you the goodness and wisdom to find your own way forward, even if you've become a bit disconnected from that. Reconnecting you with your own inner healing potential is what the counselling is all about
If you want to know more about this kind of approach to counselling, Google "Humanistic Psychology".
Working carefully, safely, skilfully with your trauma:
Matthew Power is a leading trauma counsellor. He has for many years achieved outstanding results using the best modern body-based trauma counselling approaches, with an emphasis on mindfulness.
Matthew is particularly experienced in helping people with complex trauma arising from childhood abuse, including those with addictions and serious mental health diagnoses. In his work with the Blue Knot Foundation, Matthew trains other counsellors, social workers and psychologists in the needs of those with complex trauma.
If you are doing trauma counselling with Matthew, you will be helped with a "3 Phase" trauma counselling model. This is the gold standard in modern trauma counselling:
Phase 1: Safety and Stability
Phase 2: Trauma memory work (including memory held in bodily feeling)
Phase 3: Integration of healing from Phases 1&2 into your daily living and relationships
Phase 1 always comes first, which means you will be helped at all times to feel emotionally safe, and not overwhelmed by trauma memory. The key to this is the practice of mindfulness, both at home and in the counselling room. Mindfulness can be as simple as paying attention to your drawing, your work on your car, your gardening or even mindfully washing dishes! Mindfulness is also used to develop awareness of how emotions are held in your body.
The body awareness developed in Phase 1 is the foundation of Phase 2 - trauma memory processing - primarily using Focusing. Focusing addresses a fundamental part of the trauma healing process - the way the body itself remembers the trauma with "felt senses". Recognising how essential this is, several other modern trauma therapies are also based on Focusing's felt-sensing awareness, including Somatic Experiencing, Hakomi and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Matthew incorporates elements of all of these approaches in his work.
Phase 3 is about developing new ways of being in the world and in relationship. Examples are becoming able to be assertive, rather than passive or aggressive, becoming able to reducing drinking or drug use (both prescribed and recreational) because there's less emotional pain to soothe, and becoming better at choosing friends and developing trusting relationships.
No matter how intense, how distressing and how life disabling things might feel right now, it IS possible to find real healing. It's just a matter of starting, and small step by small step, skilfully choosing to move toward a safer, happier, better future.
Matthew would like to help you with that.