I offer two styles of therapy here at Athena Counselling. The first is  Geek Therapy. Geek therapy is where I incorporate gaming, movies, role-play (think dungeons and dragons) and other hobbies that people may identify as being 'geeky' into counselling. As a gamer and geek myself, I found historically that people didn't really understand me or the things I liked to do in my free time and although gaming is more mainstream now, as an adult gamer there can still be a lot of judgement and misunderstanding around this.

Using geek therapy is like entering another world, a world specific to those of us who like to escape reality at the end of the day- using it therapeutically helps to create a safe space in which to work on our issues to eventually translate them into the 'real world'.

What would this look like? Well, in our sessions together we would look at what is troubling you and why, and we would use different methods to make sense of things. To give you an example, when exploring bereavement, we may use the Nintendo Switch game 'Spiritfarer' to explore elements of death and the afterlife and what that means for you. Or in 'Animal Crossing', it might involve building a memorial on your island for the deceased and I may be invited to join you there to reflect on the life of the person you are grieving for. We may also deal with issues around low self-esteem or low confidence. We may use elements of Dungeons and Dragons to explore this, using your character -why you chose them perhaps. Maybe you are shy and quiet but have a brave Paladin you play - we may explore how you can take elements of that character and incorporate it into your daily life to help boost your confidence. These are just a couple of examples of what you may come to expect from geek therapy with me. 

I currently use various mediums to help in therapy - games such as Spiritfarer, Animal Crossing, World of Warcraft, League of legends, Mario Kart and many more. I can also use Dungeons and Dragons and other roleplay aspects, Warhammer, movies, books and may also use some boardgames depending on what we are trying to achieve.  Whatever your hobby/interest is, we can explore it and, if appropriate, can use it within our sessions to help with the therapeutic process - this is something we can discuss during our assessment session.

 

The other style of counselling I use is Integrative counselling. What this means is that I take elements from various counselling theoretical approaches (Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, Person therapy – mainly Humanistic approaches, though CBT has some valuable tools to make use of too!) and use them together to create a more personalised and tailored counselling experience for you. This is how i initially trained, and integrative counselling is what I use both in my normal style of counselling and also within my geek therapy style of counselling. It is an open, non-judgmental, caring and safe place for you to share what is troubling you and to explore it and find a way of navigating these issues.
My aim in both styles of counselling is to help you create a toolkit to take away so that when issues arise in the future, you feel better equipped to deal with them. I like to use psychoeducation in sessions, which i believe really helps you to understand more about what is happening for you and why - this really helps with self-awareness of your internal processes. I truly believe knowledge is power in the battle for our emotional wellbeing. We all struggle at times (myself included!) and occasionally we become stuck and are unable to move forwards. Coming to counselling is a way of understanding what is happening and figuring out a way to get moving again. 
At all times this process is collaborative and I will always check in with you about what is working, and what isn't working in the counselling relationship - this is your time and my aim is to do the very best I can to help you move forward in a way that works for you.

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