Dr Katie Beckwith

A conversation with Katie Beckwith

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

  I have been interested in mental health since I was in school, and as I studied psychology in university and experienced therapy as a client, I found I was always looking for something that went deeper. After a career in public health and epidemiology, my focus turned again to psychotherapy and I found my way into a holistic course that offered what I felt I had always been missing.

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional development?

  My holistic counselling and psychotherapy studies were founded on Jungian philosophy and process oriented psychology. My own personal beliefs align with these approaches and I add my own spiritual perspective and understanding developed through experience and personal study. I believe our organism is designed to heal and has innate wisdom to guide its own healing, but that 'things' can get in the way of that healing taking place. In the metaphysical aspects, as therapy attends to, that is often other metaphysical aspects of ourselves, though these can be reflected in our external world as well. Therapy under that philosophy becomes a process of seeking self understanding and acceptance, and can entail practical adjustments in our external lives to support internal work.
  
  Trauma informed practice is incredibly important for all health practitioners, but especially for any kind of psychotherapeutic practitioner. This is a strong underpinning in my approach to therapy.

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

  I am most interested in the individual journey to understand the self, and to learn to connect to the self with compassion, kindness and love.

• What methods do you use?

  I employ a range of methods that I use in a responsive manner depending on the client and what they bring to session. The foundation of my therapeutic approach is working on the presence I embody as a practitioner, so that I can create a healing environment. The second foundation is establishing a healthy therapeutic relationship with my client. Among the approaches I might then employ are process oriented psychology, mental imagery and active imagination, somatic exercises, mindfulness exercises, compassion and deep democracy.

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

  That will ultimately depend on what the client perceives as progress. Progress in terms of perceived wellbeing is not a linear process, so it can often feel like things are going forwards and backwards. Under a process oriented perspective, simply being alive is an ever evolving process of becoming. If we become more comfortable with the process of life, we are progressing, but perception of progress is individual and subjective.

• How has therapy made a difference in your life?

  Committing to therapy for myself was the best thing I have done, and none so much or so meaningfully as the therapy I undertook while training as a holistic counsellor and psychotherapist. It has given me a deeper understanding of myself and others, of the ways in which we are hindered and supported in our individual process of living, and what it actually means to 'heal'. In working on myself, I have developed a greater compassion. This was largely through one of the hardest things, which is to face those aspects of myself I denied or suppressed, otherwise known as shadow work (Jungian) and integrating them through awareness. This remains an ongoing process.

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

  Being in a state of presence with my clients. It is a wonderful experience. Being able to put into practice, not just what I learned through my studies, but a lifetime of experience and personal work. The moments when a client perceives something in a new way, or says something out loud for the first time; that moment of meeting a new understanding of self is palpable.

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

  I have bad everything days now and again. It is part of life and the human condition. Trying to never have a bad anything day is an exhausting exercise in futility. Those tend to be days I turn inwards and take space for myself, as they signal to me a need for rest and recharge.

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

  We live in a highly traumatised world such that trauma and survival states have become normalised. Consequently there is a disconnect between our conscious selves and our deepest selves which leads to an array of dis-eases, distortion and imbalance. I am sure we could think of any aspect of our human world today and identify how this is manifested in that aspect. There is also great appetite and energy for beneficial change as well, and we must find a way to maintain hope that things can be better and to fuel that change. We can do this by working at the individual level, which has an influence in turn on the collectives.

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

  Schitt's Creek. It's funny and full of soul.