About Davina:
Davina robertson MA, MBACP: psychotherapist,counsellor,group facilitator
I am a fully qualified and insured psychotherapist and counsellor and I have worked with clients since 2009.
I know the value of getting the right kind of support when you need it most. During my life, I have tussled with tangled relationships, struggled to decide whether to stay or leave and made a number of scary moves into the unknown.
As a young woman I supported myself working as a mathematics teacher and a head of year whilst bringing up my children as a single parent. I was both sorely tested and overjoyed by parenting. I lost things, some of them very precious to me. At times, simply putting one foot in front of the other was overwhelming and lonely and I needed some help.
My own therapy
I gained a huge amount from my own therapy. I felt so relieved just to be listened to and to feel that someone else really seemed to ‘get’ how things were for me. Just as importantly, I learned to understand myself better. I started to be able to accept myself as the particular and imperfect person that I am. I learned how to live peacefully with the stuff in my past.
I learned to meet my own needs
One of the most important learnings for me was that the strategies I was using to meet my own needs, such as the need for affection or for support, were not working well for me. I have learned to be more aware what my needs are and to take responsibility for them rather than wishing and hoping that someone else would do that for me. I am more resilient, more able to meet my own needs and more willing to do things my way.
We can sort it out from the inside
My clients are ordinary people who have had, or are currently having, challenging, and sometimes devastating, experiences. They want to feel better in and about themselves and happier in their relationships.
It can feel as if the world or the people in it, or even the past needs to change in order for us to be OK. As we work together they begin to realise, that this is not the case, that we can be OK without other people changing and without the world shifting on its axis – that we can sort it out together–from the inside.
It’s all right to be the person you are
Clients can expect gentle, direct, clear communication from me. I listen with great care. I say what I see, what I notice about their ways of being in the world. I support them to understand how they, from their earliest experience, have already created brilliant strategies for life that they use every day to be as OK as possible and that they can develop new strategies now. They begin to trust that it’s all right to be the person they are and to have the preferences that they have and to take up the exact space in the world that they do. I help them to understand themselves and to have more choice about how they respond and react to what happens to them. They can begin to do their lives differently.
I don’t tell you what to do
I don’t stay silent, nodding caringly and not saying anything. However, I don’t tell you what to do—I don’t know what you should do. I work with you as myself and I use ordinary language to share my thoughts and responses to you. My clients have described me as warm, kind and patient, as capable and inexhaustible. People have said they feel safe with me, that when I am in the room, no matter what is happening all will be well. I have the capacity to be with other’s suffering and pain. I won’t shy away from it.
I don’t try to change you
I am direct with people, real, I don’t hide behind a façade. The intention to be kind is key to the way I am. I believe that people get to feel more OK with me because they have the space to find out who they are and to develop the confidence to live the way they choose to live, connect with the situations and people they value and step away from those they don’t.
I don’t try to change my clients. I allow them to be who they are, help them to understand and accept their quirks and differences, to begin to accept and express their own needs and to develop new, more resilient and joyful ways of living.
If you would like to ask how I may be able to help please click here to book a free 20 minute introductory meeting at a time that works for you.