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  • Psychotherapy in West London
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Psychotherapy in West London

Psychotherapy & Counselling with Marcus Gottlieb

Therapy for Psychosomatic Illness & Unexplained Physical Symptoms

Medical disorders such as migraines, eczema, chronic pain, digestive problems like IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) or ulcerative colitis, and CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) or ME, often respond well to a psychotherapy approach that takes the body-mind link into thorough and properly informed consideration.

Are Psychosomatic Symptoms, Stress Related or ‘All in the Mind’?

To refer to these symptoms – which conventional medicine seems helpless to relieve – as ‘stress related’ is in no way to dismiss them as unreal or ‘all in the mind’ These problems are all extremely real, and conditions such as ME/Chronic Fatigue and Irritable Bowel absolutely deserve to be treated with seriousness, dignity and respect, whether or not the label ‘psychosomatic’ is applied to them.

Even conditions that have an underlying organic cause can be made much worse by stress and anxiety. Actually, practically every disease has a ‘psychosomatic’ component. For example, the painful symptoms of a condition such as arthritis tend to be experienced as much more distressing and disruptive if the person is also depressed or anxious.

Psychosomatic illness can often manifest as symptoms that are also associated with serious health problems, such as chest pain, for example.

Understanding Psychosomatic Illness and Unexplained Physical Symptoms

Unmanaged excitation and muscular tension, which we experience as stress, can lead to the development of a variety of symptoms and diseases such as chronic pain, high blood pressure, eczema, IBS, ulcerative colitis, CFS or ME, anxiety disorders and depression.

Repeated attempts to cure the conditions or symptoms, whether through ineffectual medication or by futile attempts at ‘relaxation’ or ‘mindfulness’, can merely add to a sense of failure and feed into the stress and sense of helplessness which is the original source of the problem.

Marcus utilises fully up-to-date understandings of how stress relates with how we use and organise ourselves and how these factors interact with the body’s reactions to overwhelm so as to form symptoms which can become chronic.

Your body and your mind form a single organism that has to be treated in an holistic way. The patterns that underlie your feelings of overwhelm (conscious or not), and the release of hormones that cause your symptoms (such as IBS, ME, migraines, eczema etc.) must be seen holistically as psychological patterns, physical patterns, and emotional and mental patterns, that have a meaning, a history and a function in the present.

Stress-Reduction Behavioural Therapy for Psychosomatic Illness and Unexplained Physical Symptoms

Body, mind, thoughts, memories, feelings and sensations are all interconnected, and therefore, whatever you present in therapy, Marcus will work with the whole of what you bring, in terms of personal issues, trauma history, overwhelm, worries, fears and concerns. In particular, as a procedural approach that is in line with modern, neuroscientific understanding, the careful use of ‘personal space’ and ‘somatic experiencing’ exercises brings relief and healing to your whole organism:

  • through helping you connect to yourself and experience how parts of you feel healthy and comfortable, in order to help you grow a more warm, accepting relationship to yourself and others
  • by getting you to feel how your patterns have a function and are not just ‘bad’
  • by getting you to feel how you can recalibrate your behaviour in future to react to events in a less stressed manner
  • by showing you how to regulate yourself under pressure and to self-soothe
  • by letting you perceive conflicts or stressful situations with a greater distance and improved self-regulation
  • through reducing symptoms and feelings of helplessness, so you can organise a more emotionally integrated way of acting and living a personal life
  • by viewing life transitions and crises as a challenge to form new personalised answers and discover how to develop your own, more appropriate means of expressing your needs and getting them met

Therapy for Psychosomatic Illness & Symptoms with Marcus

Take the first step to understanding and managing your skin conditions, migraine headaches, IBS, ME or Chronic Fatigue or other psychosomatic illness and contact Marcus to learn how these behavioural therapy methods can help you with your ‘unexplained’ or psychosomatic physical symptoms.

 

Contact Marcus


Further information about Psychosomatic Illness & Unexplained Physical Symptoms

Below you will find some helpfull information to explain further the area of Psychosomatic Illness and Unexplained Physical Symptoms.

Stress Management
This is Marcus’s other website which focuses specifically on the issue of stress and stress related illness
The Impact of Stress

What is Psychosomatic Illness and how does the body respond
Here are two informative videos that cover different aspects of Psychosomatic Illness and how we respond to it.


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West London Psychotherapist with Client | Notting Hill Therapy

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Pesso Boyden Group with accredited practitioners Deborah Clarke and Marcus Gottlieb

Pesso Boyden Group with accredited PBSP practitioners Deborah Clarke and Marcus Gottlieb

Pesso Boyden Therapy (‘PBSP’) is a philosophical process for becoming whole.

It is a respectful, interactive group process that heals by embedding new memories in the brain and in the body

Most people consciously or unconsciously have memories – explicit or implicit – of 

1. deficits 

2. traumas 

3. having to take care of others when we were too young – e.g. protecting a sibling, providing the joy in the life of an unhappy parent, unconsciously becoming the ‘spouse’ of a widowed parent, or making the world right after hearing stories of injustice. 

When any of these three categories of memory appear in the client’s work, the client and therapist work together to externalise them, in order to illuminate the client’s ways of handling life and to facilitate change. The client is always in charge of this process – people and incidents from the client’s past will be symbolised in the here-and-now either by people in the group or by objects in the room, all chosen and placed by the client. 

The therapist then works with the client to facilitate an antidote to what happened in the past – a new memory which provides what the client needed at that particular time in their past, from a specific kinship figure. This new memory may be developed over several sessions in a number of steps. In the Pesso approach we don’t change our history; however, we do change our response to our history, leading to a new perspective. 

The way is opened to possibilities of greater pleasure, satisfaction, meaning, integration and connectedness.

 



Deborah has worked as a Performance Coach for over 16 years having trained with Coach U. Her background is in the arts as an actor, theatre director and artistic director. She has worked with a wide range of people from all walks of life. Having first encountered Pesso Boyden as a client, she felt inspired to do the training herself. Since graduating in 2013 she has been running Personal Development workshops using the Pesso Boyden system and is now accredited by the official PBSP U.K. organisation.

Notting Hill Therapist | Marcus Gottlieb Psychotherapist & Counsellor
Marcus Gottlieb is a highly experienced London-based psychotherapist with a particular interest in boarding school survivor syndrome. Having trained alongside Deborah directly under Al Pesso and his closest collaborator Lowijs van Perquin, he is steeped in the work of PBSP and a strong believer in the client’s genetic impulse towards health and expression of their unique potential and individual destiny. He became an accredited Pesso Boyden therapist in 2021.
An Introduction to the Pesso Boyden Method

 

An opportunity to learn about and observe the distinctive techniques of this respectful body-based psychotherapy.

Suitable for both psychologically interested professionals, people seeking personal development/CPD and for people not in the therapeutic professions seeking to address entrenched issues. For all those who are interested in living a larger life. A special price of £35 for the day includes lunch and refreshments. CPD certificates will be available.

PBSP (Pesso-Boyden System Psychomotor) is a powerful, deeply respectful, psychotherapeutic process that uses feedback, ritual, objects and role players in a unique manner to heal the traumas, wounds and losses that affect our personal map of the world.

Its central goal is the imaginative creation of an ‘ideal’ healthy past that a person’s brain processes so that they emerge feeling differently about themselves. As Albert Pesso said, ‘Humanity is responsible for the meaning that surrounds us. The task for each person is to create a meaningful life and then live it with existential courage and passion.’

As well as gaining new perspectives, clients often experience increased pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connectedness following a PBSP session and find themselves psychologically freer to make the changes they wish for in their lives.
Date: Saturday 7 October 2017
Venue: Notting Hill, London W11
Time: 10.00 am – 4.30 pm
Cost: £35 (inc lunch & refreshments)

 

Register Your Interest


Boarding School Survivor Syndrome Conference

BOARDING SCHOOL: Surviving the Syndrome
Broken Attachment and Childhood Trauma

University of Brighton

Saturday 9 September 2017
9.30 am to 5.00 pm

Conference for psychotherapists, counsellors, mental health workers, boarding school survivors and other interested people.

Conference overall aims are to:
§ Present key aspects of what has been published about the psychological and other effects of boarding.
§ Explore helpful therapeutic approaches for clients who are former boarders.
§ Consider current research and a possible agenda for future research
§ Enable networking amongst those interested in this important topic

Chair: Pam Howard, School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton.

Speakers: Nick Duffell, Joy Schaverien, Alex Renton, Thurstine Basset, Anni Townend, Olya Khaleelee.

Group Discussion Facilitators: Marcus Gottlieb, Leslie Lund, Nicola Miller, Simon Partridge, Boarding Concern Directors.

For more details, contact Laura Williams:
southcoastevents@brighton.ac.uk

Pesso Boyden Workshop with Ana María Ruiz Sancho and Marcus Gottlieb

 

Pesso Boyden Therapy is a respectful and highly respected, body-based psychotherapy with distinctive techniques aimed at addressing entrenched issues. It is an interactive process that creates new body-based memories to heal emotional deficits of the past.

An exceptionally powerful personal development tool, it uses feedback, systematic procedures, objects and role players in a unique methodology, in order to repair the early traumas, wounds and losses that can powerfully influence the brain’s map of the world.

In shifting underlying perspectives, the way is opened to the possibility of greater pleasure, satisfaction, meaning and connectedness, and an enhanced freedom to effect longed-for changes.

It is expected there will be between 8 and 12 participants, with an absolute maximum of 15. The day will start with an explanation of Pesso Boyden and an experiential introduction, followed by 4 actual client sessions of an hour each.

Venue: Philadelphia Association, 4 Marty’s Yard, London NW3 1QW
Date: Saturday 3 June 2017
Time: 0930 to 1800
Cost: £75

Register Your Interest



Ana María Ruiz Sancho is an experienced psychiatrist and a psychotherapist. She is also a specialist in group dynamics and an Institutional and Team Motivation Consultant.

Ana is the Founder and a Director of VocAcción, as well as being a qualified Pesso Boyden psychotherapist.


Notting Hill Therapist | Marcus Gottlieb Psychotherapist & Counsellor

Marcus Gottlieb works with relationships, sexuality, abuse and trauma, with a particular interest in boarding school survivor syndrome. Qualified in Pesso Boyden as well as other psychotherapies, he is also an Alexander Technique teacher.

Contact Marcus

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