Matthew Giardini

Simply being with someone who cares and listens is liberating and healing, I keep this humble truth at the center of my practice. Clients work with me to free themselves from complex traumas, anxiety, depression, and relationship issues. Trust, compassion and attunement between us is how it works. Sessions are dedicated to our ongoing “compassionate inquiry” into the nature of your emotional pain, its origins, the experience of it in your life, your mind, your body, and the path forward. At times we don't have to say anything, we just have to be present and allow your body to process, what emerges is the vitality of your true self. Every person has unique needs and a unique story, we each also have deep intuition about what to heal, and how and where and when to heal. You don't need more “good advice", or “healthy coping mechanisms”, or more self criticism, this only creates resistance and keeps emotional pain suppressed. You can discover vitality, truth and meaning within yourself. I work with clients who are dealing with trauma, anxiety, depression and relationship issues. Your wellbeing and vitality is directly related to how safe you feel. Your nervous system adapts to situations that are threatening on the one hand or trusting on the other without asking your permission. So how do you bring yourself back to homeostasis? Self compassion and curiosity is the way forward. We have lots of tools in our toolbox. Most or all therapeutic modalities and techniques are forms of gentle exposure, in that we can use them to more calmly, clearly and compassionately experience and accept the troubling thoughts and feelings that damage us, so that our bodies can release the pain. I will guide you to engage your body's innate ability to heal itself. “Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung "Cues of safety are the treatment... safety is defined by feeling safe and not simply by the removal of threat." Stephen Porges & Deb, from Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory "Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves." Bessel van der Kolk, from The Body Keeps The Score "Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer." Gabor Mate, from In The Realm of Hungary Ghosts "If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviours, it's only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry." Gabor Mate, from In The Realm of Hungary Ghosts "Emotional competence requires the capacity to feel our emotions, so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress; the ability to express our emotions effectively and thereby to assert our needs and to maintain the integrity of our emotional boundaries; the facility to distinguish between psychological reactions that are pertinent to the present situation and those that represent residue from the past." Gabor Mate, from When The Body Says No "Behind your thoughts and feelings there is a mighty lord, and unknown sage - it is called Self; it dwells in your body, it is your body." Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra