Why did you create Jennifer Online? How does Email Therapy work?

I created Jennifer Online to try to help people who cannot easily get to a Psychologist’s office, or who might prefer to write their feelings down rather than express them in face-to-face sessions. Email and other forms of online therapy provide confidential, fast and effective psychological help. The online process gives you time to reflect on your thoughts, and you have an ongoing record of your progress. Clients who communicate with me by email find that writing often helps them to clarify their thoughts.

People who live in remote areas and those who have certain social or personal problems sometimes find it inconvenient to physically attend therapy sessions. Face-to-face clients who travel interstate or overseas but want to maintain contact, people with disabilities, farmers, and those who need to travel big distances to obtain face-to-face support tell me that they would like to have access to online therapy. It provides support and guidance in difficult situations that might arise between face-to-face sessions.

Some clients are better suited to email therapy than others, so it’s important to explore the most effective way for you to receive support. If you contact me, I can help you to decide how you would like your therapy to proceed. Online therapy is relatively new, and it is important to be mindful to establish a safe and individual space so you can receive appropriate support.

Jennifer Online has been established for past and current clients who wish to make online contact. I accept new online clients who live in Western Australia, as I have a good knowledge of the types of support services available. If you live in another state or overseas, you are welcome to contact me for information. I will attempt to help you to find local support, or an online therapist who might better understand the mental health system in your area.

Medicare and private health funds do not provide rebates for online therapy. You can read more about the benefits of email therapy at: http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/inpsych/internet/.

Back to Top

What is a Clinical Psychologist?

A Clinical Psychologist studies human behaviour and emotions to better understand and relieve psychologically-based distress and dysfunction, and to support subjective well-being and personal development.

Clinical Psychologists integrate science, theory, and practice to alleviate emotional suffering. They support clients in adapting and adjusting to new or difficult situations. They can enhance personal development. Clinical Psychologists focus on the intellectual, emotional, biological, psychological, social, and behavioural aspects of human functioning across all ages, in varying cultures, and at all socio-economic levels.

The minimum training requirement currently required by the Psychologists Board of Western Australia is a Master’s Degree, which involves four years of undergraduate and two years of post-graduate study at an accredited University, followed by two years of full-time supervised practice.

The three major orientations of Clinical Psychology are psychodynamic, Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and humanistic, although there is a growing movement to integrate these and other approaches, such as the mind/body connection. I studied CBT at University, and have developed a more eclectic approach, based on the individual needs of the client, during my 14 years in private practice.

Back to Top

Who do Clinical Psychologists help?

Clinical psychologists can work with individuals, couples, children, older adults, families, small groups, and communities. They can practise in private settings, or in multi-disciplinary teams involving other professionals, such as social workers, psychiatrists, and dietitians.

They usually work on a face-to-face basis with people, either individually or in groups, assessing clients' needs and providing therapies based on psychological theories and research. Clinical Psychology is a rapidly developing field and research in the area is important. Some Clinical Psychologists work as trainers, teachers and researchers in universities.
Back to Top

What is the difference between a Psychiatrist and a Clinical Psychologist?

People often confuse Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who have undertaken additional specialist training. Clinical Psychologists study at a post-graduate level in either an Arts or a Science faculty. Unlike Psychiatrists, Clinical Psychologists are unable to prescribe medication. Clinical Psychologists prefer to help people to improve their subjective well-being, mental health, and life functioning by exploring distressing or detrimental thoughts, feelings, or behaviours. If they feel clients would benefit from medication, they suggest that clients to see a GP or a Psychiatrist.
Back to Top

What is Hakomi?

Hakomi is a form of body-centred psychotherapy which focuses on respecting the client, while enabling very positive and lasting changes. The name Hakomi derives from the Hopi Indian language and means “where in the many realms do I stand”, which reflects Hakomi's emphasis on assisted self-study.

Developed by Ron Kurtz in the 1970s, the Hakomi method combines Western psychology and body-centred techniques with the Eastern philosophies of mindfulness and non-violence. Hakomi is grounded in five principles: mindfulness, nonviolence, organicity, unity and body-mind holism.

Traditional psychotherapy is called the "talking cure". Hakomi does not rely on a conversational style to promote healing. The therapist works with present experience, which is the essential ingredient and the foundation of the Hakomi therapeutic approach. Using one or more of a number of respectful interventions, the therapist helps the client to mindfully study body sensations, emotions, and memories to invoke powerful and lasting changes.

Back to Top

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness helps us to distance our conscious intention from our experience, so that we don't try to control what happens. In being mindful, we begin to recognise and understand how our beliefs and habits organise our experiences, giving us a chance to challenge and change them.

Mindfulness, in Hakomi terms, is a process of quietening ourselves so that, with the help of a therapist, we can study the ways we filter information about life - ways which we usually constructed when we were much younger. By identifying these filters, often in the context of vividly re-experienced memories, Hakomi therapists help clients to develop a more current and accurate view of themselves and others. Mindfulness is an essential part of Hakomi therapy.

You can learn more about Mindfulness in the Reading Room.

Back to Top

How does Hakomi work?

Hakomi facilitates change through a simple and powerful psychotherapeutic technique that draws upon general systems theory, neuroscience and modern body-centred therapies.

Five principles - mindfulness, nonviolence, organicity, unity and body-mind holism - guide the attitude of Hakomi therapists and their use of techniques.

Hakomi involves several steps:

1. Creating a healing relationship: The client and therapist work to build a relationship that enhances safety and the cooperation of the unconscious.

2. Establishing mindfulness: The therapist helps the client to focus on and study the organisation of personal experience. The therapy is based on the concept that most behaviour is habitual and is organised by early memories and beliefs.

3. Evoking experience: The client and therapist make direct contact with core feelings, beliefs, and memories, which have mostly been stored in the unconscious.

4. State-specific processing: If the client is ready, the therapist helps the client make the transition to state-specific processing, which can involve mindfulness, strong emotions, and child-like consciousness.

5. Transformation: The client experiences a new, healing way of approaching habitual problems.

6. Integration: The client and therapist make connections between the new healing approach and the rest of the client's experiences.

Back to Top

Why does Hakomi focus on emotions?

We can experience emotions as irrational, unnecessary and bothersome, and try to ignore them or push them away. But discounting emotions cuts us off from a fundamental part of ourselves, so we cannot fully be ourselves.

We can repress our emotions – but at some point or other, like a beach ball being held under the water, they can spring up with great force, sometimes leading us to hurt others, through words or physical actions. Repressed emotions can cause inner tensions and sometimes, illness.

It is better to accept our emotions and learn to shift our attitude to curiosity and compassion for ourselves, as well as for others. This helps us to recognise that emotions happen for a reason. When we explore the basis of our emotional responses, we can understand why the emotion exists. Sometimes these emotions are there to warn us of a danger, which may have existed in our childhood, or can exist in the present. By studying our emotions we can learn more about our core beliefs and values. Hakomi psychotherapy helps us to reclaim the full range of our emotions, leading us to feel more effective, self-accepting, and balanced.

More about Hakomi and emotions can be found at www.scotteaton.com/approach.html

Back to Top

Where can I learn more about Hakomi?

Please refer to Jennifer Online's References and Resources section in the Reading Room for more information on Hakomi.
Back to Top

What is hypnotherapy? How can hypnotherapy help me?

Hypnotherapy is a way of accessing your deeper self - sometimes called the subconscious – through a variety of techniques, all which involve mindfulness, increased awareness, and a quietening of the conscious mind. Most people can go into a hypnotic trance – unless they choose otherwise. Contrary to popular beliefs, other people do not control the person who is hypnotised. In fact, the person under hypnosis generally develops more personal effectiveness. Clients' minds are so strong that they can access inner untapped power rapidly, often ahead of the therapist. The clients’ own beliefs, ethics and values usually protect them from any suggestions the therapist might make that go against their personal integrity. Children can benefit from hypnotherapy.
Back to Top

What is Loving Presence?

Loving presence is a way of being that is encouraged in Hakomi sessions. When embodied, loving presence in the Hakomi therapist engenders trust and can facilitate powerful changes in the client. Hakomi masters Ron Kurtz and Donna Martin have written a very helpful article on Loving Presence.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PRACTICE OF LOVING PRESENCE

by Ron Kurtz and Donna Martin

"Earth’s the right place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better." (Robert Frost)

Loving presence is easy to recognise. Imagine a happy and contented mother looking at the sweet face of her peaceful newborn baby. She is calm, loving, and attentive. Unhurried and undistracted, the two of them seem to be outside of time… simply being rather than doing. And, gently held within a field of love and life’s wisdom, they are as present with each other as any two persons could be.

When someone offers loving presence in relationship, it has a very powerful effect on another. Possibly without even noticing it, the other feels safer, feels heard, appreciated, and even understood. When that happens, healing has already begun and is most likely to continue in a fruitful direction.

Loving presence is a state of being. It is pleasant, good for one’s health, rewarding in and of itself. It’s a state in which one is open-hearted and well intentioned. In its purest form, it is spiritually nourishing and sensitive to subtle energies. It is also the best state to be in when offering someone emotional support.

By emotional support, we mean support for the processes that create and sustain a healthy, happy emotional life. One look around will tell you that this is desperately needed. A healthy emotional life requires a safe place to express and someone loving to bear witness. It requires the release of old emotional hurts and an opening for new paths to pleasure and joy.

Loving presence and emotional support are big parts of relating to each other. In all areas of life, whether personal and professional, their presence or absence is significant. We have all experienced the difference. Loving presence is not only easy to recognize, it is easy to teach. We have taught it experientially to hundreds of people in the past few years. It is taught using the following steps.

As the sequence of exercises unfolds, we first become aware, in a gentle way, of some of our habitual agendas around relationship. We then learn to relax our attachments to these agendas. This relaxation brings an opportunity to establish a whole new sensitivity to others. As we do this, we begin to experience loving presence, a pleasant, relaxed, present-centred, open-hearted state of mind. Finally, we practice relating to each other from this state.

As in the Hakomi Method generally, we use mindfulness to discover and study our habits. Mindfulness is a state of consciousness in which we turn our attention to the flow of our experience, with the added and unusual condition that we have no intention to control what happens. For most of us, this is not our usual state of consciousness.

In mindfulness, we are not just reacting. We are also noticing our reactions. We are participating as observers of our own behaviour. We are at least one step removed from anything that seems to happen by itself in our experience.

In the Hakomi Method, we use evoked experiences in mindfulness to study and understand ourselves. We may use little experiments to evoke such experiences. The first thing that happens is that a mindful state is established. Then, while in that state, something is introduced (it may be a statement, a movement, a touch etc.) and whatever experience is evoked by that is studied and discussed. This method is used to study the habits that organize our experiences. Since most of what we do and feel and think is habitual, these habits are very close to who we are. Habits reflect our images, assumptions, and beliefs about the kind of world we live in and who we are within it.

Mindfulness is also a traditional method of spiritual practice. In distancing oneself from all that creates the everyday habitual self, one begins to recognize the Self that does not change, the powerful and universal Self that permeates all. There is a basic freedom that comes from relaxing our attachments to who we think we are and how things should be. There is a lightness of being, a peacefulness, a kind of spaciousness that makes room for humour and compassion.

This spacious mind is about celebrating mystery and humour and a Self beyond the limits of the ordinary ego. One aspect of this spaciousness is the ability to see things with a wide-angle lens and from many different angles. It is acting without controlling. Not being attached to particular outcomes. Being sensitive and open. Lowering the noise of internal chatter and the preconceived ideas that generally interfere with clarity, insight, and intuition, as well as with true acceptance and understanding.

From mindfulness, to spaciousness, we begin to see more clearly, and to open to new possibilities of how to be nourished, to feed the soul. This kind of non-ego centred nourishment fills us up and radiates out as loving presence, providing the ground and context for healing to unfold spontaneously.

These are the steps we move through to cultivate the practice of loving presence: mindfulness, self-study, relaxation and spaciousness, seeing clearly (perceptual wisdom), non-egocentric nourishment, and loving presence.

Back to Top