“Real healing can begin only when we learn to be present in the places of self where we have been absent” (Welwood, 2000) 

When we seek and create connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other.

Therapy & Supervision

Being a therapist is not just a job but a way of being in a world with a caring attitude, listening deeply with an open heart, seeing the ‘whole picture’ and beneath the surface. True to its original meaning, psychotherapy is “care for the soul” in daily life. At a time when psychology emphasises only its scientific side, I like to hold and include the philosophical, artistic, and spiritual roots of the psychotherapeutic process. Following and understanding the core of symptoms, learning to change outgrown beliefs and relational patterns, achieving peace within yourself, and making better choices, are only a few aspects of the process. Psychotherapy is also a beautiful experience of creative dreaming life into being, inspiring and profoundly moving.

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with you and offer you a way of coming home to your whole Being, Belonging, and Living a Soulful Life.

My Approach To Psychotherapy

The key elements that shape my approach to psychotherapy are my humanistic and relational-oriented values, the significance of the therapeutic presence and alliance, the immediacy and fullness of experiencing life, and me as a person (my education, life experience and my own unfolding inner process).  

  • I hold the humanistic beliefs that all human beings are inherently capable of self-determination and free to make meaningful growth-oriented choices. Thus, humanistic therapists treat clients as active participants and agents in their self-change process. At the same time, they treat clients as a whole person rather than as a collection of parts, functions, behaviours, or symptoms. Ideal functioning involves awareness and integration of all aspects of self, even when these are currently in conflict and causing pain.

  • People function best and can find their way through life challenges when they are supported and challenged in a reliable and authentic relationship. It is evident through the research that the power of psychotherapy lies in the therapeutic alliance, characterised by empathy, genuineness, unconditional regard and clear focus. It is a collaborative creation of new relatedness that speaks to the primary hopes and fears, needs and longings, traumas and disappointments that make up the unique felt meanings of a person's life.

    That healing relationship is developed and maintained through consistent, moment-to-moment compassionate connectedness, congruent engagement, and exploratory stance. It may feel like a soulful conversation - a form of art that requires a caring aware presence and precision in responding.

  • Immediate experience is the basis of human thought, feeling and action. It is also a 'dynamic ground' of possibilities where the change happens. Experiential therapists view a person as a process and interaction rather than a fixed entity. Psychotherapy provides a healing interaction and a new lived experience. What matters is not so much the content of what we talk about but how we relate to life and each other.

    Therapy is not primarily about solving problems, developing coping mechanisms, or gaining insights. Instead, it is about co-creating the kind of relating to the self and each other that makes us alive, heals our wounds, sets us free and develops new possibilities.

  • Soul-Work is a profound and enduring process of transformation. While working at the Soul level, we access a deep continuity of being, dwell at the edge of what is not-known-yet and connect with the embodied inner guidance to navigate the shadowy depth of our humanness. Our sensitivities, vulnerabilities and wounds are doorways to Soul. The paradox is that only when we enter their depth, we can find our gifts, inspirations, wisdom, and purpose.

    Everyone has a unique path, direction, and purpose. When connected to our authentic and whole self, or Soul, we learn the truth about who we are and our potential and have the source of energy to fulfil it. That energy constantly moves towards more life and aliveness, seeking creative expression, movement, growth, and expansion. In Soul Work, we reconnect with the most potent source of guidance, and from this connection, we can remember our purpose.

  • My formal education as a psychotherapist, life experience and therapy have given me compassion for the twists and turns of life and human pain. My experiences have taught me to listen for and treasure each person’s unique qualities and the resources they bring to the therapy relationship. My struggles have given me depth and made me a better therapist. I see my dedication to psychotherapy as a deliberate practice and an ongoing commitment to personal and professional development.

    If I ever had to choose one method to take with me and use it exclusively, it would be Focusing-Oriented Therapy and the felt sensing method.

    In my practice, I see that people grow from being ‘held’, feeling emotionally connected and deeply understood, experiencing being related to in a way that cultivates their self-esteem and self-compassion, and being aware of their impact on others. Most people respond well to these ‘nutrients’, whether they have anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship or personality issues.

    Many people who have the courage to enter therapy have endured painful life situations alone - without anyone supporting them or appreciating what they have survived. Often, they need to create a healing relationship that helps them feel connected and inspires them to create a better life. That is what makes psychotherapy a profoundly humane and human experience that is truly transformational.

 

Let’s meet at the edge of change where “more” will come… Every step of the way, I will be there, helping you navigate the territory and supporting you to be kind to yourself no matter what you face inside. 

Focusing-Oriented Therapy

Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT) offers a unique and empowering experience. FOT is a client-centred therapy that incorporates sophisticated means for deep listening and helping clients identify, honour, and express their lived realities and inner truths. Eugene Gendlin, the originator of FOT, highlights its essence by saying, “The sense of what is wrong carries with it inseparably, a sense of the direction towards what is right… Every bad feeling is potential energy towards a more right way of being if you give it a space to move towards its rightness.”

FOT is about helping you experience a whole new connection with yourself—a connection based on a profound acceptance and radical compassion toward all aspects of your being and trust in the power of your own inner wisdom to guide you. I sincerely believe that the most effective way to meet life’s challenges and keep thriving and growing is not by fighting or “fixing” ourselves. Instead, we learn to follow our inner knowing that is unfolding in our being as we interact with others and the environment.

As a Focusing-Oriented therapist, I will help you access your creative ways of tapping into deeper levels of awareness and wisdom, making better choices, and living a meaningful and satisfying life.

 Emotion-Focused Therapy

EFT is an empirically supported humanistic treatment that views emotions as centrally vital in the experience of self, adaptive functioning, and clinical change. It has evolved in recent years to have a significant impact on psychotherapy.  The main focus of EFT is the development of a supportive therapeutic relationship and the accessing and processing of emotions, which then helps in creating new understanding and beliefs about the self, others and the world. With the therapist's empathic understanding and the use of experiential methods, clients learn how to make healthy contact with feelings, memories, thoughts, and physical sensations that have been ignored or feared and avoided.

If you have: 

•       difficulty with very intense, overwhelming emotions, or

•       more often suppressing emotions and feeling ‘not much’, or 

•       often feel confused by your own emotions and stuck

•       if you want to tap into the guiding wisdom of your core emotions, or

•       want to harness the power of emotions to make a positive change

•       want to feel better about yourself and feel emotionally closer to loved ones, then Emotion-Focused Therapy might be for you.


Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy

Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT) helps couples and families re-creating safe, loving emotional bonds, respectful, attentive ways of listening, communicating, and understanding each other. 

EFT is based on attachment science – our essential need for human connection and secure bonding. When trying to cope with life challenges, a not-securely attached couple develops many problematic behaviours and builds emotional barriers that drive them apart. This disconnection is painful for everyone involved. As an EFT therapist, I respectfully help partners understand each other's emotional experience and break the negative, hurtful cycles of interaction, while gradually establishing a new way of relating that is safe, bonding and deeply fulfilling. My goal is to guide you in creating a safe and secure emotional bond and a relationship filled with satisfaction, intimacy, trust, and love.

EFT for couples is an empirically proven form of therapy developed by Dr Sue Johnson. Research shows at least three-fourths of couples who participate in EFCT rebuild a securely attached, happy, and emotionally healthy relationship. EFT is a powerful way to build a relationship even when one or both partners suffer from mental health problems.

Dr Sue Johnson has won many awards for her development of EFT and the positive impact on therapy, couples, and families around the globe. You can access her online couple program here:https://holdmetightonline.com

 Interested in booking a session with Biliana?

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Counselling And Psychotherapy Supervision

Psychotherapy and counselling are more than a career. The work we do as psychotherapists is, I believe, a calling, and a vocation. It involves our entire being - not only our minds and skills but also the wholeness of self. It requires wholehearted participation, allowing us to be moved by our client's life experience and becoming "a new us" with each and every client. Each therapy relationship teaches, challenges and stretches us, as well as grounds, enriches and nourishes us.

Being a therapist is about developing a ‘therapeutic presence’ – the privileged instrument of every successful therapy, polished by inevitable stresses and down-falls of life and our profession.

We all need help with this work. Not only do we need holding and help to understand and respond to our clients, but we need help to sense into and connect with our own deep struggles, “wants” and the growth potential inherent in these healing relationships. Supervision includes more than talking about our clients.

I welcome whatever emerges in our supervisory sessions: traditional supervisory exploration, the Experiential Focusing process, theoretical discussion, or coaching in practice and career development. I equally enjoy working with individual therapists or facilitating a group process.