About Alex Golding, psychosynthesis counsellor

What psychosynthesis is

I am a psychosynthesis counsellor. Psychosynthesis is an integrative approach, which in practice means the work is shaped around you, not around a method or a diagnosis. It works with the whole of a person: from what we would rather not look at, to what is trying to grow. Its roots are psychodynamic and Jungian, and it was among the first approaches to treat a person's spiritual life as real, rather than as a symptom to be explained away.

If you would rather see the work than read about it, what actually happens in a psychosynthesis session is a plain account of the hour itself, and the inspiration behind psychosynthesis covers where the approach came from.

Before this

I spent years in the arts, and I have forty years of putting Buddhist humanism into action. Long enough that it stopped being something I learned and became something I am - there is a difference. Neither looked like preparation for becoming a therapist, but both turned out to be exactly that.

I have also spent many years running men’s groups, youth groups and community groups, and mentoring men one to one, some a good deal younger than me and some older. I come from a mixed cultural background, and the work of becoming, belonging and making a creative life has given me a good deal to draw on in the service of others.

I have sat in both chairs. I have been the client as well as the therapist, and I have not forgotten what the first of those is like.

Training and registration

Postgraduate Diploma in Professional Development - Psychosynthesis Counselling, a Level 7, 120-credit award from the Psychosynthesis Trust, on a course accredited by the BACP and the UKCP. Registered member of the BACP, no. 411804, working to its Ethical Framework. DBS certified and in regular supervision.

That training matters, and not only because it is a requirement I would not practise without. Psychosynthesis turned out to be a close fit for everything that came before it: an open framework rather than a fixed method, willing to take spirit and potential seriously, hopeful about what a person can become, and with practical tools for change.

Registered and listed with

How I work

What I offer is the same person, week after week, paying attention to what you bring, including the places that are hardest to show. Some of the work is talking. Some of it is noticing what is happening in the body, or staying with an image, or working creatively when words run out. How we work depends on what is in front of us.

Some of what hurts did not start with you, and none of it means you are the problem. We do the work of separating what is yours to own from what may never have been yours, be it what your family needed from you then, or how the world treats someone like you now. We look at what has actually been true for you, and where you want to go from here.

“When I am closest to my inner, intuitive self... whatever I do seems to be full of healing.” - Carl Rogers, 1986, in Dryden, Handbook of Individual Therapy, p147

Who comes

People come when the ways they have been coping have stopped working, and thinking about it has not helped. Often that is depression or anxiety, and often the two together. Sometimes it is a relationship, or a change that has left them unsteady, or an older trauma that has never been put down. I see adults of all ages, men and women, and a good number of the men have spent a long time not talking about any of it. And sometimes it is not one particular thing, just a sense that life could be better, or a need to say out loud how it feels to be you.

You do not need to have worked out what it is before you come. That is what a first session is for.

Some of the ground this most often covers: the primal wound, the harsh inner critic, men and emotions, and starting therapy for the first time.

Outside the therapy room

I write and produce music, walk in parks and galleries, read novels and poetry alongside spiritual and psychological texts, practise improv, and spend time with friends and community.

Getting in touch

The first fifteen-minute call is free, and there is no obligation either way. If you would rather just try a session, book one directly and make a start.