Individual Therapy
Individual psychotherapy with Dr Monika Wieliczko, Chartered Clinical Psychologist, in Weybridge, Surrey, South East London and online.
You don't need to have a diagnosis or know exactly what kind of therapy you need before contacting me.
Sometimes people come to therapy because something has happened — a relationship has ended, somebody has died, life has changed unexpectedly or an experience has left them struggling to feel like themselves.
At other times, it is harder to identify a beginning.
You might find yourself repeating the same patterns in relationships. You may struggle to trust people or depend on them, become overwhelmed by other people's needs, find it difficult to express your own, or notice that the same feelings seem to follow you from one relationship or stage of life to another.
And sometimes there is simply a sense that something isn't working anymore.
Individual therapy gives us a place to understand what is happening, how it may have developed and what might need to change.
What Can Individual Therapy Help With?
I work with adults experiencing a wide range of emotional and relationship difficulties, including:
anxiety and emotional overwhelm
difficulties in relationships
recurring relationship patterns
low self-worth, shame and self-criticism
grief and bereavement
separation, divorce and relationship breakdown
trauma and difficult past experiences
attachment and relational difficulties
family difficulties
feeling emotionally disconnected or numb
difficulty setting boundaries
putting other people's needs before your own
major life changes and transitions
feeling stuck despite understanding yourself well
You don't need to fit neatly into one of these categories.
One of the purposes of our initial sessions is to understand your particular experience, rather than trying to fit you into a predetermined treatment.
When You Understand the Problem But Still Can't Change It
Many of the people I work with are psychologically minded.
They may have read extensively, had therapy before or spent years trying to understand themselves.
They can often explain exactly why they behave in certain ways.
And yet when something happens in a relationship — somebody withdraws, criticises them, becomes angry, needs too much from them or gets too close — the old response returns.
You might think:
“I know I'm doing it again, but I don't know how to stop.”
This is because understanding something intellectually and experiencing it differently are not always the same thing.
Our ways of relating to other people often developed through experiences that happened long before we had words for them.
Therapy can help us move beyond simply understanding the pattern towards experiencing something different.
Relationships Often Tell Us Something Important
You don't need to be in couples therapy for relationships to become an important part of individual therapy.
Our closest relationships often reveal patterns that are less visible elsewhere.
Perhaps you become very anxious when somebody pulls away.
Perhaps you rarely ask anybody for help and feel safest when you depend only on yourself.
You might find yourself repeatedly taking responsibility for other people's feelings, choosing emotionally unavailable partners, avoiding conflict or staying in relationships long after your own needs have disappeared from view.
These responses usually make sense when we understand where they came from.
They may once have helped you maintain relationships, avoid rejection, manage conflict or protect yourself from being hurt.
Therapy allows us to become curious about those patterns rather than simply judging them.
A Relational Approach to Psychotherapy
My approach to individual therapy is primarily relational and psychodynamic, informed by attachment theory, trauma psychology and my wider training as a Clinical Psychologist.
This means I am interested not only in the symptoms you experience but in you as a whole person.
We might think about:
what happens when you need other people
what you expect from relationships
what happens when you feel rejected, criticised or misunderstood
how you respond to conflict
whether closeness feels safe
how easily you recognise and express your own needs
the ways you protect yourself when you feel vulnerable
The relationship that develops between us can also become part of the work.
The patterns we experience elsewhere sometimes appear in therapy too. Being able to notice and understand them together can provide information that simply talking about relationships cannot always provide.
When Past Experiences Continue to Affect the Present
Sometimes current difficulties are closely connected to experiences that haven't been fully processed.
This may involve a clearly traumatic event, but it can also involve experiences that accumulated over time.
Where appropriate, I can integrate EMDR into individual psychotherapy.
For some people EMDR becomes a significant part of the work. For others, relational psychotherapy remains the main approach.
We decide this based on your individual formulation rather than assuming that one particular therapy is right for everyone.
[Read about Trauma & EMDR Therapy →]
Grief, Loss and Major Life Changes
Loss isn't limited to bereavement.
We can grieve relationships, identities, imagined futures, health, fertility, careers, homes and versions of our lives that we expected to have.
Major transitions can also expose difficulties that were previously manageable.
A relationship ending, becoming a parent, children leaving home, illness, bereavement or a major career or family change can leave people questioning who they are and what happens next.
Therapy doesn't necessarily make these experiences less significant.
It can help you make sense of what has changed and find a way of living with what cannot simply be undone.
What Happens When You Start Therapy?
The first few sessions are an opportunity for us to understand what has brought you to therapy.
I will ask about what is happening now, but we may also think about your history, important relationships and previous experiences of therapy.
Together we begin developing a psychological formulation — a shared understanding of what may be contributing to your current difficulties and what might help.
This isn't a diagnosis or a label.
It is a way of making sense of how your experiences, relationships, emotions and ways of coping fit together.
From there we can decide what the work needs to focus on.
Individual Therapy in Weybridge, Surrey, South East London & Online
I offer individual psychological therapy in Weybridge, Surrey, South East London and online.
My Surrey practice serves people from Weybridge and surrounding areas including Cobham, Esher, Walton-on-Thames, Addlestone and Chertsey.
I also work with clients from Beckenham, Bromley, Crystal Palace, Penge and surrounding areas of South East London.
Online psychological therapy is also available.
