Jake Freedman

I am a counsellor and psychotherapist registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council BPC and the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy BACP . I have an MSc in Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy from Birkbeck, University of London and a PGDip in the Philosophy of Mental Disorder from King's College London. Prior to qualifying, I worked for seven years in community-based mental health and addiction treatment settings. I worked for five years for an organisation providing long-term psychotherapy to individuals with histories of addiction and childhood trauma.  This work gave me an in-depth understanding of how adverse early experiences can impact on behaviour and psychic functioning in adulthood. Since then, I have undertaken extensive postqualifying training in the treatment of developmental trauma and dissociation. I have a particular clinical and theoretical interest in states of depersonalisation and derealisation. I keep up to date on relevant research related to treatment approaches and best practice in this area. As a psychodynamic counsellor and psychotherapist, one of my primary tasks is to help you identify and understand recurring themes and patterns in your relationships. This involves an exploration of how you relate to yourself, others, within the workplace and even more abstractly to the object s of addictive processes. Although certain ways of relating may have been conducive to your survival at one point, you may now be experiencing their cost. It is important for us to pay attention together to the emotional experiences within which these ways of relating occur. The use of the therapeutic relationship is another means through which these patterns can highlight themselves and become live material to learn from within sessions. The therapeutic process aims to make these relational patterns conscious and thus more amenable to change. Before therapy commences, our first two sessions will comprise an initial consultation in which your area/s of concern will be explored and a full history will be taken. In the initial consultation, we will discuss your goals and decide together on how long we meet for. This can be reviewed as our work progresses.