Welcome! I'm Eva. I'm a psychologist and psychotherapist specialising in all things feelings. Not a huge surprise for a psychologist, you should think. But actually, a lot of thought in psychotherapy goes into thoughts. Not all, but a lot.
I work emotion-focused, meaning I am primarily interested in finding out what my clients feel: When they talk about the problems that bring them into my office, about the past that formed them, about the future they are concerned about, about the people they are in relations with. We will also talk about what they think and do, but most of all we will try to understand more about their emotions.
Isn't that super easy? Well, sometimes, yes. For some people easier than for others, yes. But for most of us there are emotional blind-spots - situations where we really struggle to check in with ourselves and understand what is going on inside.
Are emotions in the body? Yes, this is where I tend to find them, most of the times. Feelings have a strong bodily manifestation, this is how we get aware of them. They are not thoughts, they actually change the way we feel in our bodies. No wonder, we often act upon emotions immediately. Without thinking.
Can we change the way we feel? Yes, we do that all the time. Our feelings usually switch after we act upon them, e.g. when after we've tended to the need that comes with a feeling: After escaping a threat our anxiety gets replaced with relief, after expressing our resentment we might feel sad or lonely and from needing the other to listen and acknowledge our anger we switch to needing a hug.
Are feelings an easy thing to understand? Well, in principle emotions have a clarity about them that makes them easy to understand, but sometimes (or often) they get covered by other feelings - I might feel angry on the top and sad underneath. Or several feelings pop up at the same time, leading to a block, not knowing which action tendency to follow.
Things get even more complicated when feelings from the past mix with feelings in the here-and-now...
Lots to unravel and discuss.
Come by and join the conversation!
Eva xx