10 Questions with Peggy Cook

• What led you to choose psychotherapy or counselling as a profession?

• When I was younger and teaching English a man on my team inspired me. He was able to fully involve students in classroom work, have fun and have everyone learning. He told me he learnt these skills in a psychodrama group. When I started psychodrama I was both terrified and fascinated. At first I watched from the edge and then as I felt safe I joined in. I became more involved and found a way of examining my thoughts, feelings and actions that made sense to me. I learnt to reflect my experience rather react thoughtlessly and try to protect myself from pain.
  
  After participating in groups I learnt to conduct them myself. As I developed more skills I changed my career from teaching to training people to work and communicate in organisations. I became accredited in psychodrama. Sometimes I worked with individuals and this lead to counselling. I studied counselling skills, gained experience and understood more about the human mind. From courses and supervision in psychodynamic psychotherapy I developed the ability to work at a deeper level. Good therapists have accompanied me on this path and inspired me to do this work as a psychotherapist.
  

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional/personal development?

• I love action methods and group work as in psychodrama. However since working more with individuals I have been influenced by psychoanalysis. I find the frameworks are compassionate and optimistic. I find it helps me to understand how we humans can walk around the painful blind spots in our consciousness and make life more difficult for ourselves. Psychoanalytic thinking enables me to think and listen at great depth to people’s anxieties and depression. Then I can help people to understand their feelings, and behaviour and to be more creative and spontaneous in their lives.

• Which particular aspects of health or the human journey are you interested in?

• I am very interested in maintaining physical and psychological health. My experience tells me that when one is psychologically healthy one is able to enjoy maintaining physical health with a balanced diet and enough exercise. For this reason I am more interested in the psychological health.

• What method/s do you use?

• This depends on whether I am working as a parenting counsellor or psychotherapist. When I am in the role of parenting counsellor I use psychodrama to assist my clients to understand how they influence their children, the kind of dynamic that they have set up and how their children experience them.
  
  As a psychotherapist, when people are coming to me because they are distressed by something in their lives or they feel stuck and hopeless and helpless, I am more interested in the internal world of my client. I help people to talk about what is troubling them and understand the forces in them contribute to their difficulties. We might look at the influences of the past, examine their hopes and phantasies, explore the relationship with me, or think about their repeated patterns of behaviour.

• When do you think the client will start to feel that progress is being made?

• I think clients feel relief when they start therapy or counselling and usually feel immediately better. The rest is variable. With the parenting work I find people start to relate differently to their children when they feel less anxious and find out what works for their children and them. They usually take a short time to become more confident and take up their authority in the role of parent. Psychotherapy takes longer and depends on many variables but is shorter when people come more often.

• How has therapy made you a better person?

• This is an interesting question. I have to say that I am freer in myself, able to believe in my capabilities and use them creatively. I am more spontaneous. I have also stepped out of my ‘me now’ world view to be able to get alongside other people and have compassion for them, support them and walk with them through the dark places.

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

• I most like learning about myself from my clients. I really enjoy seeing people take the life path that they have been struggling to find. Parenting work is most rewarding in that when parents’ relationships with their children improve they are much more relaxed and thoughtful and able to enjoy family life. In psychotherapy I love the mystery of getting to know people and their capacity to experience life. I really enjoy it when people develop the capacity to reflect with me, or someone else o and make meaning of what they think, feel and do with their lives.

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

• Yes I have bad hair days. But they are only bad hair days. I am not overwhelmed or stifled by life’s difficulties. I can see them in perspective and tolerate them.

• What do you think is the most significant problem we face, in the world today?

• The disparity between rich and poor on the planet and the capacity of human beings to shut out the reality of the suffering this causes.

• Can you share the name of a book, film, song, event or work of art that inspires you?

• This changes according to circumstances. The last book that inspired me is The Examined Life written by S. Grosz. It is stories by a psychotherapist who reflects on his work and life with depth.
  The last film I was inspired by was The Performance for its music and understanding of the human condition.