MEET THE TEAM – JOANNA KELLY

What is your favourite thing about being a therapist?

Connecting with people when they make a link to something, and you can see they have discovered that it’s okay to think about something in a different way. It’s the communication and interaction, and sitting alongside someone when they are finding something hard, which of course we all will need at some point in our lives.

 

What is the most common/frequent issue people are bringing to therapy?

People bring a common link which is ‘I don’t understand why they cannot see it my way’, I just want to be understood.

 

Is therapy an art or a science?

Both, in my work in research programmes for funding the continuation of therapeutic models. it is important that therapy is treated as a science, and research studies facilitate this and prove to make sense. Therapy as an art allows the analyst to be a more creative thinker. As well as we could say we simply sketch an idea for a client and hope they can fill in the rest.

 

What do you do for your own self-care?

I like to do Yoga, which I have practised since I was 17. I had a massage recently and realised how good that was. I also spend as much time as I can at my allotment, planting out seedlings and watching them grow is therapy for me.

 

What is the book/movie that comforts you?

For reference when I’m feeling stuck psychoanalytically it’s Mary Morgans ‘A couple state of mind’. For myself it’s an old favourite that was given to me by my grandma, Eric Newby ‘ A short walk in the Hindu kush’. Movie has to be Christmastime tradition, ‘The Grinch’ or ‘Casablanca’.

 

What’s in a joke?

‘ A question and an answer.’

 

Tell us one:

‘Why did the Latino man go to the therapist”? “To Talk about Hispanic attacks”.