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Experience of abuse and violence against women
has been widely evidenced by the current coverage in the press. As women, we can still experience covert
and/or overt institutionalised sexism where some men seem to take advantage
of their position to sexually exploit women and girls in this society.
In some other societies women’s position seems even worse, for example, with
female genital mutilation. Hopefully more public awareness will help to
eradicate chauvinistic and cruel practices like this. Both historically and cross-culturally,
women’s position has been disadvantaged, but it has been changing, albeit
slowly. The main culprits of women’s oppression and of causes of
injustice to women have been principally men, as supported by the official UK
statistics. Approximately one in every five women has been sexually
abused in childhood and most adult perpetrators have been men and most
victims have been women. This all means that there are many women who
are holding onto a lot of trauma and emotional difficulties and often they
don’t come for help. I have frequently had clients in their 70s or 80s
who had a life time of trauma and abuse and haven’t felt able to seek help
from counselling in their younger years because of oppressive and alienating societal values.
Women who have come to see me have often felt ashamed or embarrassed to engage in therapy and, as part of this, have felt that they should really get on
with things - move on - have a stiff upper lip, etc., that they should not be
having therapy. There has been a trans-generational pressure for women to keep quiet, but with the feminist movement in particular, women have
been gradually finding their voice.
In the UK women only obtained
equal rights to vote in the early 20th century. Women
are still receiving less pay for performing the same jobs as men. It
has been reported in the press that older women tend to be more discriminated
against in the workplace on the grounds of age than men of the same age (e.g.
Olenka Frenkiel’s article, where she says, ‘The BBC: I saw guys my age
thriving. Women were gone. I, too, was being rubbed out.’ in The
Guardian on 8.11.14). Women working as house wives or mothers do not
get paid or recognised for this and the government seems to be pushing them
to go to work, thus devaluing the importance of motherhood and substituting
this with child care, which is also underpaid and mostly carried out by
women. Of course, there are also many women who choose to go back to
work soon. Although parental rights have been granted by employers, in
reality working women with children often face indirect discrimination by
employers and might be considered as ‘problematic’ e.g. when a child gets
ill. All of these and many other historical, social, economic and
political pressures and conflicting views have led to potential emotional
difficulties for women.
Over the last decades, to be
successful in the work place, women have had to adopt in large part a ‘male
dominant ideology’ such as the stiff upper lip. To show sensitivity and
to be more vulnerable is seen as being weak. This ‘male
identification’ seems to be out of synch with many women’s natural
tendencies, particularly if the person (actually, either a woman or a man) is
very sensitive and this then potentially contributes to long term emotional
difficulties.
Having said all of this,
clearly there are liberal men who support and understand women’s issues and
indeed these men have been actively helping to improve the emotional well-being of both women and of men and of course, some women contribute towards
the oppression of both women and men. Women and men both experience the
same range and intensity of feelings and therapy can help us become more
emotionally expressive and freer to make positive choices in our lives and
thus improve our overall emotional and psychological well-being.
I have a long and wide ranging
experience of working with difficulties pertinent to women in my work in the
NHS, privately and in the voluntary sector. I offer counselling/psychotherapy
from my consulting room in Seaton, east Devon & over the phone and with Skype
anywhere in the world - I accept payments through Paypal for foreign
residents.
I work with the following
psychological and emotional difficulties:
- high levels of anxiety, panic
attacks, obsessive and compulsive behaviours;
- chronic low mood, low
self-esteem, lack of self-confidence;
-self-harming behaviours
(including over-eating, under-eating, physical self-harm);
- not feeling able to leave a
dysfunctional or violent relationship and experiencing intense fear and/or
anger and rage;
- childhood trauma, including
sexual, physical and emotional abuse and neglect;
- effects of bullying;
- adulthood trauma,
including sexual exploitation, rape, domestic violence and emotional abuse
within relationships;
- childbearing, pregnancy,
terminations of pregnancy, pregnancy losses, choosing not to have children
but feeling pressurized to have them;
- ageing, losses including loss
of one’s physical health.
I, Michael Friedrich, provide psychotherapy & counselling for couples who are experiencing some difficulties in their relationship. I provide this couple / marital psychotherapy in our consulting room in East Devon and through Skype and Facetime. We offer Psychotherapy, Counselling and Supervision from our
consulting room in Seaton, for East Devon, West Dorset, South Somerset and
worldwide by Skype. Michael provides an
Individual and Couple Therapy service and supervision for psychotherapists
& counsellors in Exeter for one day a week. In addition to individual
psychoanalytic psychotherapy, Michael offers Couple / Relationship Counselling
and he provides Continuing Professional Development Training to
psychotherapists and counsellors. Monika provides the additional service of
EMDR Therapy, which can be helpful with trauma and phobias. Are you
experiencing difficulties with your relationship? Are you feeling depressed or
generally upset? Do you get to feel overwhelmed by anxiety, stress or panic
attacks? Are you dealing with painful feelings due to loss or bereavement? Have
you had a recent change in your life leading to stressful feelings? Do you have
difficult feelings around adoption? Do you have painful feelings due to
emotional, sexual or physical abuse in childhood? Do you think that you and
your partner might benefit from couple counselling? Are you suffering from painful
feelings due to separation or divorce? Are issues around your sexuality or
sexual problems concerning you? Are you struggling with strong feelings such as
irritability, guilt or envy? Do you feel frustrated because you cannot become
who you really are? Are you bothered by feelings of worthlessness, low self- esteem
or lack of confidence? Are you using food, drugs, alcohol or gambling in a way
that's detrimental to you? Do you feel alone or isolated? Do you suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder? Are you feeling very uncomfortable in your
family or at work? Is life becoming very difficult or unbearable due to any of
the above feelings or situations? Michael Friedrich provides Couple
Relationship Counselling & Psychotherapy by Skype & Facetime in your
own home anywhere in the world and in his consulting room in Seaton, East
Devon, UK. Couple Counselling is a way in which couples can meet with someone else
so that difficulties in the relationship can be diminished. We work from our
consulting rooms in Seaton, Devon,
providing counselling, psychotherapy & supervision for Exeter,
Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton, Colyton, Sidmouth, Honiton, Seaton, Axminster,
Chard, Lyme Regis, Charmouth, Beaminster, Crewkerne, Tiverton, Dorchester,
Cullompton, Tauntom, Yeovil, Ottery St Mary or Bridport. We work from our
consulting rooms in Seaton, Devon,
providing counselling, psychotherapy & supervision for Exeter,
Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton, Colyton, Sidmouth, Honiton, Seaton, Axminster,
Chard, Lyme Regis, Charmouth, Beaminster, Crewkerne, Tiverton, Dorchester,
Cullompton, Tauntom, Yeovil, Ottery St Mary or Bridport. We provide a wide range of counselling,
psychotherapy & supervision services. We can help people with the
followowing issues: depression &
anxiety relationship issues, difficulties with self esteem, problems around adoption, substance misuse, bereavement , effects of
childhood trauma, a sense of lack of meaning to life, creative & artistic
struggles, professional, sexual or spiritual identity issues. We provide Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and
Psychodynamic Counselling by Skype. Skype, phone & Facetime psychoanalytic
supervision. We provide psychoanalytic
and psychodynamic supervision for counsellors, psychotherapists and
psychologists. We do this in person, in our consulting room in East Devon and
by Skype, Facetime or phone for therapists working anywhere in the world. Of
course it can seem difficult working with a supervisor you haven't met, but
sometimes there isn't an appropriately qualified and experienced supervisor
working locally. If at all possible, we like to have an initial one or two face
to face sessions. The theoretical model we use is psychoanalytic and
psychodynamic and our preferred way of working is similar to that described in
Patrick Casement's book, " On Learning from the Patient" - in other
words, a modern British Object Relations approach, favouring the work of
Winnicott and Bion. However, because we have worked extensively in the NHS, we
are pragmatic in our approach. We consider that the central task of the
supervisor is to provide a facilitative environment to assist the therapist in
following the content of the client's material, both what is on the surface and what the underlying meanings
might be. We also place a strong emphasis on keeping the therapist and patient
safe. This means helping the therapist to maintain a manageable caseload and
also helping them with risk assessment.Please feel free to call us to have a
free preliminary discussion to explore whether it might be a good enough fit. We
are open to working with counsellors, psychotherapists and psychologists who
haven't had a formal psychodynamic or psychoanalytic training. We provide
psychoanalytic & psychodynamic supervision in Seaton, Devon. We therefore
provide a face to face supervision service for places like: Sidmouth, Lyme
Regis, Honiton, Axminster, Exeter, Bridport & Chard. From September,
Michael will be providing psychoanalytic and psychodynamic supervision in
Exeter, therefore providing a service for surrounding areas such as: Bridport,
Weymouth, Poole, Bournemouth, Yeovil, Sherborne, Wimborne, Beaminster and
Blandford Forum. We also provide supervision by Skype & phone. The
theoretical model we use is psychoanalytic and psychodynamic. Counselling can
help sensitive people in various ways.
Sensitive people tend to be more easily hurt and troubled by difficult
experiences than the rest of the population. It is therefore very common that
counselling clients are highly sensitive. Psychotherapists can help highly
sensitive people with these emotional difficulties resultant from being highly
sensitive in what is often an abrasive and traumatising world. Also, therapists
can explain to highly sensitive people that their particular temperament has a
lot of advantages. This re-framing can be very useful because we live in a
world where people in power are often not so sensitive and where the dominant
ideology is anti - sensitive and sensitive people are often thus defined negatively
I have a long and wide ranging experience of working with difficulties
pertinent to men in my work in the NHS, privately and in the voluntary
sector. I offer psychoanalytic
psychotherapy from my consulting rooms in Exeter and in Seaton, Devon. I also
work over the phone and with Skype for anywhere in the world. Michael Friedrich I have a long and wide
ranging experience of working with difficulties pertinent to women in my work
in the NHS, privately and in the voluntary sector. I offer counselling/psychotherapy from my
consulting room in Seaton, east Devon & over the phone and with Skype
anywhere in the world
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