How I work
Most people arrive able to say what's wrong in one sentence
And unable to say why it keeps happening. The sentence is usually accurate. It's just not the problem.
This page explains what I actually do about that, so you know what you're walking into.
The Dharmaplicity Framework
Four traditions, one approach
Existential psychology, cognitive therapies, family systems work and clinical sexology.
Existential
Underneath most distress are questions about meaning, choice and what you are responsible for.
Cognitive
The patterns of thought that keep you stuck can be examined and changed, once you can see them.
Systems
Your family taught you how to relate long before you had any say in it, and those lessons are still running.
Sexology
Sexual self-image runs through confidence, attachment and power. Leaving it out leaves a hole in the middle of the work.
This is not passive therapy. I ask direct questions, I tell you what I see, and I expect you to do something with it.
Six domains, one life
Most approaches pick a lane. Treat the anxiety. Fix the marriage. Improve the performance. That works until the thing you didn't look at pulls the rest back down.
Psychological
Your patterns, beliefs and internal narratives. The story you tell about why you are the way you are.
When it's off
The same argument with different people. A running commentary that would horrify you if a friend spoke that way.
What we do
Find the belief underneath the behaviour, and see what it was protecting you from.
Emotional
Regulation, resilience and emotional honesty. What you do with what you feel, and what you let yourself feel at all.
When it's off
Nothing, nothing, nothing, then far too much. Or a flatness where feeling used to be, which most people call coping.
What we do
Build the capacity to stay with an emotion long enough to learn what it's telling you.
Relational
Attachment, intimacy, sexuality and connection. How close you let people get, and what happens when they get there.
When it's off
Distance that arrives without a decision. Resentment that has outlasted its cause.
What we do
Name the pattern you repeat, trace where you learned it, and practise something other than the old move.
Physical
Energy, nervous system and embodied presence. Whether you live in your body or only carry it around.
When it's off
Exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch. A body braced for something.
What we do
Work with the nervous system directly, so insight has somewhere to land.
Financial
Your relationship with security, value and responsibility. What money means to you, which is rarely about money.
When it's off
Earning well and feeling precarious. Avoiding the numbers.
What we do
Separate the arithmetic from what it represents, and look at what you're trying to secure.
Spiritual
Meaning, direction and existential grounding. What you are doing all this for.
When it's off
Success that arrives and changes nothing. The sense of being on a track you don't remember choosing.
What we do
Ask the question most people are too busy to ask, and stay with it until the answer is yours.
Why the whole picture
When one collapses, the others compensate
A man who says he has a sex problem often has an exhaustion problem, a resentment problem and a meaning problem, in that order. Treat the sex and you get a short improvement. Treat the order and it holds.
We work systemically, not symptomatically.
What the first session is for
The work begins with a session, not an assessment process or a questionnaire. In that hour we clarify four things:
- What is actually wrong
- What is driving it
- What needs to change
- What you are avoiding
The fourth takes the longest. Most people already know the answer and have been careful not to say it out loud.
You'll leave with a clearer picture than you came in with, and a sense of whether we work well together. If we don't, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.
The shape of the work
Sessions are an hour, online, wherever you are. Most people start weekly or fortnightly, and we agree the rhythm rather than assume it.
There's no fixed number of sessions and no package to commit to. Some people come for six weeks about one decision. Others stay a year and use the hour to think out loud in a way they can't anywhere else.
When it's useful I'll give you something to do between sessions: a reflection, an exercise, a conversation to have with someone. It's never busy work. Insight, regulation and a change in behaviour happen between sessions as much as in them.
You can stop whenever you want to. I would rather you ended having got what you came for than kept an appointment out of habit.
Sexuality as core psychology
Sexual self-image is not a separate department of your life
It shapes confidence, attachment, power, performance and how fully you let yourself be known.
My background in psychology and sexology means we can look at this without shame and without avoidance. Some people want to start there. Others never raise it, and that's fine. What I won't do is treat it as an add-on, because it rarely behaves like one.
Sexual disconnection is rarely about libido, in the same way that burnout is rarely about hours worked.
Before you book
What this is not
It isn't crisis care. If you're in immediate danger or can't keep yourself safe, you need local emergency services and a local clinician, not an online session.
It isn't a place to be agreed with. I'll disagree when I think you're wrong, kindly and to your face.
It isn't quick. Clarity can arrive in one session. Change takes longer, and it asks something of you.
It isn't dependency. The work should strengthen your independence, not create reliance. The aim is that you think clearly and act decisively without me.
The aim
Clarity. Regulation. Self-leadership. Alignment between who you are and how you live.
Not a life with no difficulty in it. A life where the difficulty is the real one, and you're the one deciding what to do about it.
From here, deeper structured work or one of the online programmes may follow. Everything begins with direct, focused psychological work, and everything else is optional.
Mediation
I also work as a WTA mediator with the FMA, offering family, civil and community mediation. It sits inside the same practice and draws on the same training: the same attention to what people are really arguing about, held inside a neutral, structured process.