Simon Vickery

As an existential psychotherapist, I make use of existential philosophy. This philosophy is wanting to understand our existence. Existential psychotherapy is taking those philosophical ideas and making use of them in therapy. As an existential psychotherapist I am wanting to develop a relationship with clients, that enables you to reconnect with how you understand your identity and how it is developing over time. So that you can consider other possibilities for how you experience relationships right now, and how you move relationships on in the future.

As existential psychotherapists we also make use of what is called ‘phenomenology’, of looking and re-looking at the way in which people/places/things appear to us – our experience and perception – as a way of making sense of our experience and agency within these relationships. So that we might begin to reshape our situation, by de/re/constructing our experiences and moving aside those things that distort our view of the situation.

Becoming a psychologist, I am interested in how I support people to enable them fuller access to knowledge/skills/experiences of their identities and enable them to creatively and critically bring this in to other aspects of their lives.

As a counselling psychologist in-training, I have experience in theory and practice of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies (including Compassion Focused Therapy), Psychoanalytic (philosophy) and Psychodynamic (practice), and overarchingly in existential psychotherapy. I am also qualified to intermediate level as a systemic family practitioner, and have consultative and clinical experience in working as a systemic practitioner within social care and community mental health contexts.

"A creator is someone who creates their own impossibilities, and therefore creates possibilities. It's by banging your head against the wall that you will find an answer." - Gilles Deleuze

Existential Psychotherapist