Online Psychotherapy & Counselling

Psychotherapy and counselling provide a confidential space that helps you deal with difficult moments in life and further your personal development. They help you develop a deeper awareness of your body, emotions, thoughts and behaviours as well as increase your understanding of how your childhood relationship patterns affect your current relationships. Psychotherapy and counselling also provide you with the tools you require to change how you behave, feel, think and relate. This makes it possible to live a freer and more meaningful life with a greater sense of wellbeing. They can be beneficial in various aspects of life including moments when you:

• experience strongly depressed or anxious moods
• are suffering from a high level of stress
• are experiencing relationship difficulties
• experience low self-esteem and confidence
• feel blocked by shame and guilt
• are dealing with bereavement
• are struggling with some aspects of your sexual life
• are questioning or coming to terms with your sexual or gender identity
• are affected by the experience of trauma
• are going through major life changes
• want to have a better understanding of yourself and live a more meaningful life

As an integrative Consultant Psychotherapist and Counsellor, I offer online sessions primarily in English and Maltese. I also have a very good understanding of Italian and French so it is possible for you to express yourself in your mother tongue, should you prefer. I am trained in different therapeutic approaches which I draw on according to what is more appropriate for your needs at this moment in life.

Areas I work with

I work with various psychological issues, including:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Anger
• Bereavement
• Sleep disturbance
• Trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Sexual abuse
• Romantic relationships
• Sex and sexuality
• LGBTQIA+
• Homophobia
• Coming out
• Kink / Fetish / BDSM
• Polyamory
• Gender identity issues
• Interpersonal difficulties
• Personal growth and development
• Shame and guilt
• Self-esteem and confidence
• Stress management

As a trained and experienced EMDR Trauma Therapist, I can provide you with the necessary help and support if you are experiencing the impact of trauma or disturbing memories. You can read more about trauma and how I work with it here.

A lot of my work also focuses on sexuality and sexual issues. I adopt a sex-positive and LGBTQIA+ friendly approach and work with people of different sexual orientations, gender identities, sexual preferences and relationship formats. You can read more about my experience and how I work with sexuality and the body here.

Languages

I work primarily in English and Maltese. However, having lived in different countries, I also have an excellent understanding of Italian and French and have a good understanding of Spanish.

We can have our sessions primarily in Italian or French as long as you can also understand English in order to ensure that we can understand each other well.

Therapeutic approaches

Below are some of the main therapeutic approaches I use in my work, with a brief description of each one.

Integrative therapy

Integrative therapy centres on the fact that humans are complex beings with different physical experiences, thoughts, feelings, behaviours, relationships, and social contexts. This means that no single psychotherapeutic approach can fully understand and encompass a person’s difficulties. Instead, the best psychotherapeutic approach to use depends on what suits your needs in this particular moment in time, and what research has shown is more effective with particular issues. Integrative therapy also aims at developing your psychological flexibility. For example, if you are more of a rational person, we will put focus more on your emotions and on your body, while if you tend to be guided more by your emotions, we will focus more on including your rational side. This helps you become a more resilient person.

Cognitive Behavioural therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) aims at breaking patterns of behaviour and thought processes that are negative, dysfunctional, or distressing. It involves examining how you think and how this links with how you behave and feel. CBT includes between-session tasks to help you become more aware of your inner experiences and to help you change some of your behaviours. It is usually a shorter-term form of therapy and is more geared towards adopting better strategies to manage life difficulties.

Psychodynamic therapy

Psychodynamic therapy is based on the belief that starting from our childhood we develop ways of protecting ourselves from having to deal with painful or difficult aspects of ourselves and our life. These defences can become unhelpful as time goes by and can result in emotional problems and relationship difficulties. Psychodynamic therapy helps you become more conscious of these internal conflicts, safely experience the feelings which are causing your difficulties, and begin to resolve those conflicts. It involves looking at your past in depth to understand how it is affecting your present. Hence, it is a form of long-term therapy that enables you to get to know yourself at a very deep level and bring about deeper and longer-lasting change.

Humanistic therapy

Humanistic therapy is based on the belief that we have an ability to solve our own problems because we desire to fulfil our potential as human beings. It is when this potential is blocked or obscured by painful life experiences that mental health issues arise. Hence, in psychotherapy, we work on identifying and removing these obstacles through self-directed growth and change. This form of therapy is more focused on the present moment and is less directive than others forms of therapy.

EMDR therapy

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is a psychological treatment that targets the way our mind processes information. This is very pertinent to working with the effects of psychological trauma. EMDR helps the brain process these memories because they would not have been stored properly in our memory system and so interfere with our normal coping mechanisms.

In EMDR therapy, we stimulate the ‘stuck’ memories so that the brain can process them in the normal way it processes memories. This reduces the distress those memories cause you. EMDR therapy usually entails moving your eyes repeatedly from left to right, though it can involve other forms of bilateral stimulation. Apart from these bilateral stimulations, EMDR also involves other procedures that help reduce distress. All of this is integrated within a psychotherapeutic framework that allows you to make sense of these memories and better integrate them with the rest of your life.

Session duration & frequency

Sessions are usually 50 minutes long. In some cases we might decide together to have longer sessions, as in the case of some EMDR sessions.

In order for therapy and counselling to be effective, it is important that there is a certain flow to our work, otherwise it would defy the purpose of our work. In light of this, it is important that, as a general rule, we meet every fortnight. It is also possible to meet more frequently. The frequency can change as we go along and towards the end of therapy we can decide to change the frequency to once every 3 to 4 weeks.

It is impossible to know beforehand how many sessions you will need to attend in total. You are always free to end therapy at any point in time. However, given the need for the development of trust in order to do some deeper work together, it is reasonable to plan for 4 to 6 sessions initially before getting a better idea of how our work is proceeding.

When we come to the end of therapy, it is recommended to have a closing session in order to allow for integration of the work we have done together.