Therapy

I offer therapy for various types of challenges. My therapeutic orientation is client-centered. This means that as a therapist I aim to offer a warm, non-judging contact in which you and I are equal. In this contact I try to be present as a genuine human being rather than as an expert. It’s my curiosity and a deeply felt acceptance of you and your experience, which are the driving forces of my therapeutic approach.

As a client-centered therapist, I’m not so much interested in labels and DSM-diagnosis. I regard my clients as whole persons, rather than as a collection of behaviors or symptoms.

Examples of challenges I can help you with:

  • negative thoughts are at times impacting your mood and energy
  • you find it hard to make important decisions in your life
  • you don’t know how to deal with difficult emotions
  • some situations trigger unpredictable tensions/anxieties/self-doubt
  • you find it hard to focus
  • you find it hard to deal with things that happened to you in the past

If you feel you need therapy with a focus on ‘dysfunctional’ thoughts and learning new strategies, then I would suggest looking for a cognitive behavioral therapist. My approach is aimed at coming to terms with difficult/negative thoughts, rather than trying to change them. And to help you connect with your own gut feeling and wisdom, rather than trying to teach you new strategies.

There are a few methods/therapeutical orientations that we can use in therapy:

  • KOP-model: a highly structured, short-term method which can help you identifying ways to deal with actual problems. These ways can have to with both your environment and your own way of dealing with challenges.
  • Emotion Focused Therapy: this therapeutic orientation is rapidly growing more and more popular. The basic assumption is that our emotions offer essential information about our fundamental needs and motivate us to act according to these needs. However, these primary adaptive emotions as they are called, can get buried under maladaptive emotions (like anxiety, shame, fear, guilt) and problematic behaviour (like rumination, distraction, …). Using EFT, I can help you reconnect to your primary emotions. Once you connect to these emotions, you will better feel what your basic needs are and you can satisfy them better.
  • MBSR/MBCT Mindfulness: an individual version of these popular and most commonly used mindfulness protocols. Mindfulness gives you more awareness and acceptance of yourself and the world around you. This helps you dealing more adequately with the things you can change, and saving stress and frustration by accepting better what you cannot.

I have a background in clinical psychology, coaching for High Sensitivity and mindfulness. More about my educational background you can find here.

To book a session you can contact me at francisco@amsterdam-mindfulness.nl. I offer sessions on Mondays, Saturdays and Sundays at my home at Granaatstraat 38 in Amsterdam. Sessions last 60 minutes and cost 75 euro an hour including VAT.

 

 

I offer therapy in these languages:

  • Dutch
  • English
  • German