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Raf Goovaerts

About Psychotherapy

We understand why children are afraid of darkness, but why are men afraid of light?

Plato

How do we live life fully?

Have we come to terms with our life experience so far?

How do we cope when we encounter challenges and difficulties in our lives?

Psychotherapy offers a powerful opportunity to explore these, and many other questions, that become pertinent at certain pivotal moments in our lives. We read a lot about happiness these days but often prefer to steer away from exploring our suffering and the sources thereof.

Psychotherapy provides a way to examine more deeply and actively what makes us suffer as well as what makes us happy. Doing this in relationship with a therapist opens up a wider field of exploration and potential than just sitting with and pondering everything alone by yourself. It provides you with an extra support and a “therapeutic mirror” as you deepen within yourself and your own truth.

I see therapy as a gentle instrument to foster a sharper listening to our embodied experience in the present moment and gradually to develop trust in this experience.

When we learn to listen, insight and wisdom can emerge.

When we go slow, trust can develop.

When we learn to trust, we can move forward.

Core Process Psychotherapy

There is meaning in what for long was meaningless. Everything depends on the inner change; when this has taken place, then and only then, does the world change.

Martin Buber

Core Process Psychotherapy combines Western and Eastern (Buddhist) approaches to psychotherapy and how to improve our mental well-being. Clients are supported to bring gentle awareness to their personal process and problems within an atmosphere of mutual enquiry and kind compassion. This enquiry is supported by a core belief that inherent health is present in each of us and that therefore true healing is possible if we can be fully present with our experience.

The Outer and Inner Journey

It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently.

Carl Jung

We all have acquired rich life experience, some good, some not so good perhaps, and have had to adapt in order to cope to the best of our ability. We are deeply engaged with life and how to make the best of it to realise our potential. We could call this our outer journey. As human beings, we are also driven to find purpose and meaning behind our life experience and aspirations. We could call this our inner journey.

Core Process Psychotherapy can help you integrate both these journeys through a deeper exploration of both in the present moment. This integration can be understood as a conversation between our life experience (our Process) and our inner presence (our Core) with the aim to find firmer grounding and resilience to be with whatever life presents us. Bringing gentle awareness to this in the therapeutic relationship can be healing for us.

I like the description of psychotherapy as a dance of mutual intimacy, between the client and the psychotherapist as well as between the outer events or experiences that have brought us into therapy and our inner experience or capacity to be with these. There is a mystery in this dance which does not easily allow for pre-set agendas but prefers the therapeutic relationship and creativity to flow naturally. Over time, a greater sense of freedom can help us move forward.