Jasmine Cooray

Hello and Welcome. My role as a psychotherapist is to help you explore your own experience, find ways to make it easier to be you, and deal with the particular worlds you inhabit. Together, we will talk, see what thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations arise, and do our best to understand them.You will be provided with a warm, clarifying and grounding environment: a confidential space to not be alone with what is bothering you. Can you describe a bit more about how you work- I work in an integrative, creative, embodied way, which means I am trained in several different modalities and will draw from them according to your needs. For example, I might offer a safe witness to painful parts of your history, or I might offer ways of changing or managing negative thoughts that arise in the present.  Usually I work combining looking backwards and looking forwards: that is, work towards understanding the experiences that contribute to your challenges, and find ways to manage and overcome the echoes of these experiences in the present. I find sensations in the body a useful informant for our emotions, so usually will attend to these too. I will encourage anything that there isn't plain language for  to be expressed with the body, in drawings or verbal images, if that appeals to you. We can discuss what you feel might be helpful in the initial session, and if I think something might be useful as we along, I will offer it directly to you for discussion.  I have experience with a wide range of issues that include stress, abuse, anxiety, relationship issues, gender and sexuality, bereavement, abandonment, disability, chronic illness, self harm and low-self worth. Why are you a psychotherapist- I believe that we have all done our best to survive and adapt to the circumstances of our pasts, but that sometimes we need help letting go of what isn't useful anymore and finding the freedom to live the life that we want. I want to do work that challenges the message that we must be inauthentic about how we feel to be acceptable. I came to counselling as someone who found being a client incredibly healing, and wanted to pass that experience on. I'm here to help give you a leg up into breathing more easily.