Life Story Therapeutic Interview and Accompaniment

Who is this for?

This is for adult Third Culture Kids who feel fragmented and dislocated in their own stories, and who long to feel whole, coherent and like they make sense!

This is for you if you want the comfort of empathy, if you want the clarity that comes from hearing your story accepted and understood, and if you want the dedicated company of another adult TCK as you walk into the story still to come.

You might want to explore themes of relationship, trauma, confused belonging, “home”, languages loved and lost. Or you maybe want to explore your desire (and fear!) of “staying”, conflicting identities, challenges with transitions, or challenges with the mundane every day.

We are always going to look at these themes and questions from the context of your own life and your own experiences – and from the premise that whatever challenges you are working through, they all make sense given the story you have lived.

What is it?

Life Story Therapeutic Interview and Accompaniment is a model of work born directly from my doctoral work with Third Culture Kids. Then, I worked with a system of interview that was known as life story interviewing.

These interviews were clearly therapeutic for many of my respondents, as they heard themselves more clearly through the narrative of their own story, and as they heard themselves understood and accepted by a fellow Third Culture Kid.

And so Life Story Therapeutic Interview and Accompaniment was born as a new and bespoke approach designed by me specifically to meet TCK need. Traditional counselling models were often helpful to TCKs, and yet this often seemed to stop short of helping offer a sense of coherence and context to the TCK as they strived to make sense of their life so far. To be understood was a constant cry of the hearts I heard. I wanted to create a model of work that would help TCKs centre themselves in their own stories, ground in their own identity, and gain clarity about how they want to engage in the world around them.

How does it work?

Life Story Therapeutic Interview and Accompaniment begins with a two-hour session where we walk through your story – your whole story from “I was born…” to “… and so here I sit with you now!” In fact, sometimes the story begins even before time of birth because so often we feel the need to contextualise even this; “So you need to understand some of my parents/grandparents’ story to understand why I was born here…”

This story, this precious autobiography, is our context piece. This is the “you” we hold in mind when we explore what you want for your future story. This is the resource, the reminder, the raw data that will illuminate the paths we will take together. There is everything we need here, in you, and it’s a stunning journey. Our hour-long sessions ongoing will keep this “whole story” in mind and draw from it constantly to orient and lay new routes ahead.

Fees

I charge £70 an hour, and I charge weekly with payments to be made before the session time ideally. If this fee feels unworkable though, please do talk to me about this, as I am sometimes able to offer reduced rates. Talking it through usually allows us to come up with a solution!

I use a platform called SquareUp, which will deliver your invoice by email with a button that will allow you to pay by card. On the rare occasion this is problematic with your card, I can also invoice by PayPal.

I send invoices on a Monday, but these are only payable just before our session that we’ve booked.