What is Psychodynamic Counselling?

Psychodynamic counselling is a personal counselling approach that helps you understand how your past experiences, especially early relationships, shape your present thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

It’s based on the idea that not everything we feel or do is fully conscious.  Sometimes, unresolved emotions, patterns, or defences from earlier in life continue to influence us without us even realising it.

Psychodynamic counselling therapy has its roots in psychoanalysis, a field developed in the early 20th century by Sigmund Freud.  Freud introduced the idea that many of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by unconscious processes, things we're not fully aware of.

Over time, other theorists like Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and John Bowlby expanded on these ideas, exploring childhood experiences, internal conflicts, attachment patterns, and how we develop emotionally.

Psychodynamic counselling involves weekly sessions where the therapist helps you explore your inner world in a structured, relational, and thoughtful way.

 Psychodynamic personal counselling gives you the space to:

• Explore deeper emotional patterns

• Understand recurring themes in relationships or behaviour

• Work through feelings that may have been buried, avoided, or misunderstood

• Gain insight into the unconscious drivers behind stress, anxiety, anger, or low self-worth

• Make lasting changes—not just in how you cope, but in how you understand yourself

A key part of this approach is the relationship between you and the counsellor.

The way you experience that relationship can reflect and reveal patterns from other areas of your life, providing you with an opportunity to understand and rework them in a safe and supportive space.  Helping you uncover your own clarity, freedom, and insight, at your own pace.