I agree with Carl Rogers, the founder of Humanistic psychology, when he says that for a person to grow, it’s important to live within an environment that provides genuine (openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regards) and empathy (being listened to and understood). These three pillars are uppermost when I meet a prospective client, during an initial session, and right through until a final appointment.​ For a person to overcome temporary challenges and impasses, it’s crucial to occupy a safe space and time where he/she could process his/her needs and desires, in order to be able to gather their strengths and to make plans on how to move forward. My typical integrated approach combines techniques from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Narrative Therapy. This entails an initial period listening to a client’s stories, identifying recurrent themes and key words that may indicate telling events in his/her life. Moreover, I aim to utilise CBT techniques, to focus on thinking patterns and possible thinking distortions that are very common to us all, yet which may become heightened by particular and specific events. After establishing our therapy goals, I value the importance of offering a client a “take-home” thought from our sessions, highlighting the valuable work completed during our time together, and underlining the improvements achieved in between sessions as our learnings are applied to a client’s everyday life. I like to envisage therapy (and life in general) as a ladder: sometimes a destination may appear far and unreachable, the ladder may seem steep and unstable, but by taking one step at a time, a therapist holds the ladder steady, encouraging you to climb higher than you may have thought possible.