What is therapy?

At its core, I believe therapy is a confidential and safe space for you to explore whatever you’re thinking, feeling and experiencing. Therapy will feel different for everyone and my role is to hold space for you, ask questions, provide different perspectives and explore and reflect on your experiences with you. 

People chose to have therapy to understand more of how they were shaped, gain insight and awareness of their thoughts and feelings and discuss arrangements of new possibilities going forward. With that said, therapy can look into your past, whatever is currently happening for you and look towards the future with different ways of being. There are hundreds of different approaches to talking therapy, however, they all have one thing in common - providing space and support for you and your experiences. 

Therapy is not a solution to fix a problem. Therapy is an ongoing reflective process for you to talk, explore your autonomy and hopefully further understand who you are.

My approach to therapy

I am trained within an integrative approach to counselling. This means I work within different modalities of therapeutic thinking. My theoretical and practical approaches include humanistic, psychodynamic, relational, phenomenological, existential and pluralistic. I combine all of these approaches to create a therapy experience that is queer and sex positive, kink-affirming and practiced with an open mindset.

Essentially, in a jargon free description, I focus on you and the experiences you’ve had that have brought you to therapy. Depending on what you wish to talk about, we may explore your earlier childhood experiences, what’s happening now for you and your goals and aspirations. My approach encapsulates the essence of your ‘here and now’ experiences which may involve your past, your present and your future self.

I describe my practice and our therapeutic work as collaborative, fluid and adaptable depending on what comes up within our sessions. Ultimately, you’re the expert of your life and I see my role as offering my therapeutic skills, techniques and perspectives to help you gain clarity into your experiences and alleviate any distress you may be feeling. 

I am registered with the BACP (400163), meaning that I adhere to the BACP’s Ethical Framework, ensuring I practice counselling - underpinned by a commitment of good practice - with my clients. If you’re interested in knowing more about this, please see: here.

Man with hand on his forehead. Image credit to Trendify & Sketchify via Canva. Will Hardy Therapy.
Woman in a crop top. Image credit to Trendify & Sketchify via Canva. Will Hardy Therapy.
Woman in wheelchair. Image credit to Trendify & Sketchify via Canva. Will Hardy Therapy.

What can therapy help with?

Therapy is a safe space for you to explore anything you want to talk about. You may wish to discuss stresses within your work, finding your purpose, dating, low-moods, your relationship with sex, questioning parts of your identity or political and societal issues. I’ve listed below some more areas of work we can explore within counselling. Please note, this list is not exhaustive and all areas are interchangeable within each other. This illustrative list is to give you a sense of what’s possible within our counselling sessions.

Identity

  • Sexuality

  • Gender

  • Race

  • Religion

  • Values and motivations

  • Career

  • Self-esteem

  • Body image

Mental health

  • Anxiety

  • Depression

  • Phobias

  • Eating behaviours

  • Suicidal thoughts

  • Addictions

Trauma

  • Physical abuse

  • Emotional abuse

  • Sexual abuse

  • Assaults

  • Death

  • Grief

  • Bullying

Relationships

  • Family

  • Partner

  • Friends

  • Marriage

  • Children

  • Pets

  • Polyamory

  • Monogamy

  • Open relationships

  • Sex

LGBTQIA+

  • Sexuality

  • Gender

  • Dysphoria

  • Shame

  • Questioning self

  • HIV/AIDS

  • Kink

  • Drag Queens, Kings and performers

Health and neurodiversity

  • Medical conditions

  • Autoimmune diseases

  • ADHD / ADD

  • Autism

  • Learning difficulties

  • Dyslexia / dyspraxia

  • Disabilities

  • Chronic illness

  • Pregnancy

Different approaches to therapy

There are over 400 different types of talking therapy. You may find therapists who practice in a singular approach, or some who encompass a range of theoretical ideas for their therapeutic work. As I highlighted above, my practice is integrative which includes the following approaches: humanistic, psychodynamic, relational, phenomenological, existential and pluralistic. I’ve listed below some further brief descriptions of each of these for you to understand more of the theoretical underpinnings of my practice.

Psychodynamic therapy

This approach is derived from theories of psychoanalysis. Psychodynamic therapy is a process of helping you understand what you’re feeling right now and how this may be shaped by your past or early life experiences. Exploration of your unconscious mind, behaviours and defences may bring further awareness to patterns and cycles you wish to understand more of - or to change.

Relational therapy

Working relationally focuses on the therapeutic relationship and what’s happening in the room between us. This exploration can then offer us perspective and exploration of your wider relationships to look at patterns, behaviours and relational experiences. My relational approach focuses on the relatedness and differences between us to identify wider perspectives of your experiences.

Existential therapy

Your past and previous experiences play a part in how you’re feeling in the present moment, however, this approach focuses on the ‘here and now’. Your sense of purpose, meaning of life, unknown fears and the choices you have made may be areas that are further explored. Existential therapy is underpinned by philosophical thinking around responsibility, acknowledgment of what’s out of our control and the anxiety that is caused by the conflicts of human existence.

Humanistic therapy

This approach is an umbrella term for many modalities. Humanistic therapy explores your full potential as a human being through your autonomy of self discovery and free will. Humanism looks at the whole picture and aims to offer space and perspective to recognise your strengths and choices in life.

Phenomenological therapy

Phenomenology is simply the philosophy and understanding of the human experience. This philosophical thinking, within a therapeutic approach, fundamentally focuses on your lived experiences through your perspective of life. A phenomenological approach focuses on your descriptions and avoids trying to pathologize or clinically label your experiences.

Pluralistic and integrative therapy

Psychotherapeutic pluralism offers me the framework to collaborate with you across your goals, wants, needs and preferences for our therapeutic relationship. At its core, this approach is collaborative and creates a wider framework for my practice to work diversely across different modalities and ways of thinking with you. Integrative therapy is the process of integration of more than one therapeutic approach. There are similarities and differences between these approaches, however, fundamentally I describe them as frameworks for our sessions to be fluid, adaptive and collaborative.

Woman praying. Image credit to Trendify & Sketchify via Canva. Will Hardy Therapy.
Gender fluid individual dancing. Image credit to Trendify & Sketchify via Canva. Will Hardy Therapy.
Gay male couple with baby. Image credit to Trendify & Sketchify via Canva. Will Hardy Therapy.