About Me
Hello there. My name is Alex!...
I have been working as a counsellor, in a variety of settings, for the past 5+ years, supporting people facing a range of personal problems and challenges—big and small.
As I've gained more and more experience in helping people overcome the challenges that life throws their way, I've become convinced of something: Life is filled with obstacles for a reason. Challenges are here to help you grow and evolve!
However, in order to grow and evolve with life, we first need to learn to face our emotional pain, instead of avoiding it, which is what we commonly do: ‘Let’s not ever again talk about how dad died, ok? Don’t ever remind me that it happened...’
Sounds familiar?
On the contrary, when we find the courage to face and understand our pain, not only do we find better ways of dealing with it, but it also becomes a pathway through which we can know ourselves more deeply. This is how Rumi put it:
“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”
The therapy that I offer
Counselling is about learning to live inwardly. It’s about the realisation that in addition to the life outside of us, that we are so concerned for, there is also an inner life that we hardly ever pay any attention to. No matter what your circumstances are, or what you are 'suffering from', the first step towards a happier life is to remember that the external is not all that there is to life. Until we learn to give our inner life the attention that it deserves, our external life will remain conflict-ridden and will never be sufficient enough. On the contrary, if and when we discover the internal dimension of life, we'll be internally safe even in the darkest of times. This is what can be called a ‘balanced’ life, one where half of one’s attention is aimed to the outside, while the rest aims within. The therapy that I offer is designed to lead you to this internal dimension. What we'll discover is that one of the main reasons why you tend to push this dimension aside is because it hurts. Our most significant wounds hide there. But if we learn to face our demons and heal these wounds, the joy that exists behind them becomes accessible to us. The sessions are led by you. You will be asked to trust your intuition and lead us in the direction you consider important. 'What should I talk about?', I hear people ask me sometimes. 'Talk about that which hurts the most' is my response.
Languages
English
Spanish
My approach to counselling
I work mainly in a person-centred way, but I tend to integrate elements of transpersonal psychology, mindfulness and meditation into the sessions.
My Qualifications
I am accredited with the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy). I trained as a counsellor at the University of Northampton (MSc Counselling) in 2018 and later trained as a psychologist at BPP University London (MSc Psychology) in 2019. I was enrolled in a Doctorate in Counselling Psychology (DCounsPsych) at the University of Manchester but decided to leave the course after I realised that, sadly, academia tends to interfere with the immediacy and simplicity that I believe need to shine at the core of counselling.