My approach is what is described in counselling terminology as “eclectic”. This means that I use and merge several different modalities, approaches, and techniques, rather than specializing in one. This flexibility allows for a more bespoke approach that adapts to the needs of the session, the client, and the therapeutic relationship.
There are pros and cons of staying specialized versus becoming eclectic. You could argue that eclecticism means you lose depth of training and practice. Single modalities are also often rigorously studied with a specific protocol. Eclecticism may not always follow that protocol, and can be argued to therefore no longer be “evidence based”.
However, as you’ll see below, different modalities target different issues, have unique modes of actions, and can work in conjunction with other modalities in helpful and innovative ways. The most “evidence based” intervention in counselling is through developing therapeutic rapport (the client truly feeling seen and supported by their counsellor), and I believe that can only happen with an eclectic approach because it is adaptive, responsive, and offers choice.
| Modality | What it’s for | Scope and definition | How it connects |
| CBT: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy | Behaviour Thought patterns Daily functioning Practical change | Works with the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Builds practical skills, identifies unhelpful patterns, and makes change feel possible and concrete. | CBT often gets treated as the whole toolkit when it’s really the entry point. It gives us a shared language and some immediate traction. A way to interrupt the spin, a way to get some footing. But a thought pattern that’s been running for twenty years isn’t just a thinking error. It’s usually a part of you that formed for a reason. Once we have some footing here, we can start asking what’s under the hood. |
| EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing | Neurology Trauma What can’t be approached head-on Below conscious reach | A body-inclusive approach to trauma that works by allowing the nervous system to process what it couldn’t at the time. Memories that feel frozen or overwhelming become integrated rather than intrusive. | There are things that talking, or behaviour changes simply cannot move. You can understand an experience completely (know exactly where it came from, name every way it shaped you) and still get overwhelmed if you touch in to it (or dissociate and feel nothing). EMDR is a framework for gently approaching, touching, and resolving trauma at the root. It’s where we go when the story is clear but the body hasn’t caught up yet. Parts work helps us make sure the right parts are ready before we go there. |
| Parts work/ Internal Family Systems | Meaning-making Inner structure Story Identity Relational patterns | Holds that we are not singular, but made of many parts, each with its own role, history, and intention. The work is not to silence the difficult ones, but to understand them, and return them to their natural place. | This is the frame that makes everything else make sense to me. When a CBT intervention isn’t sticking, it’s usually because another part disagrees with it. When EMDR feels too fast, it’s because a protective part isn’t ready. IFS tells us who we’re actually talking to in any given moment, so we stop mucking about, making things worse. |
| Somatic work Body-based awareness | The body Nervous system Subtle feelings Hidden sensation What lives below words | Uses breath, movement, sensation, and embodied awareness as the primary material of the work. The body is not a container for the mind, it is its own awareness, one that often speaks before language can catch up. | I treat this less as a technique and more as a discipline of attention that runs underneath everything else. At any point in a session — mid-sentence, mid-story — I might ask: where do you feel that right now? Not to interrupt, but because the body is usually one step ahead of the narrative. It knows what’s real. Learning to read it and trust it is often the whole work. |
These modalities are lenses I hold simultaneously, letting the work itself determine which one comes forward. In practice, a single session might move from naming a thought pattern, to noticing where it lives in the body, to meeting the part that formed it, to letting the nervous system finally complete what it started years ago. What guides the movement between them is attunement to you, to what’s present in the moment and between us. The goal isn’t just “symptom reduction”. But to work towards inhabiting your life freely, bravely, and fully.