Why ‘Affirming Therapy’?

Within an affirming approach to therapy, a clients’ feelings, experience and core identity are not questioned, compared against societal norms and expectations, or labelled as something to be ‘fixed’.

With individual difference as an inevitable and natural variation of the human experience, I believe it is so important to understand and normalise such diversity, rather than marginalise and stigmatise it.

To affirm is to see the strength of another and to encourage and support individuals to recognise their own strengths, their own capacity to heal and grow, to build the confidence and resilience necessary to navigate their own particular challenges in life.

‘Affirming Therapy’ builds on validating a client’s experience, the feeling of being seen and heard, and can help support development towards greater self-awareness and self-acceptance, and to feel empowered to take (back) control of their own life.