Dr G. A. Lahood

 

Holistic Counselling    Psychotherapy    Psychedelic Integration

Specializes In:
Relational Inquiry & Transpersonal Research

About

Safe and confidential I offer short and long-term work/care to adults (over 21) from my practice rooms located in Byron Bay and globally through online sessions. I began training in creative therapies in 1983 and have been involved in broad psychotherapy, psychotropic (shamanic) and spiritual inquiry since then. I am 61 years of age, not quite and elder, but I am a seasoned facilitator and a mature therapist. I stand on 40 years of fertile ground working and training in my chosen fields. My education includes Grof training, PHD Cultural Anthropology, Master of Gestalt Therapy. I practice ethically, am experienced and intuitive (see more about Dr G).

I offer myself as a support system in an empathetic enquiry which allows for an exploration of a broad range of issues. We focus on the situation you are in (rather than fault-finding, analysing, taking-sides or blaming) we look at ‘what is’ here and now and how to bring your resources, strengths, and desires to make the changes you want.

Insight and understanding into how we react in certain situations brings about cure. I also hold that there is an Opening, a spiritual or transpersonal clearing, that is always and already present and which ‘ultimately’ can never be taken from us – we can and do lose many things. Some of our work will be about creating the conditions for this Opening to be realized, felt and lived.

You may bring a particular issue such as anxiety, depression, death, loss, heart-ache, work conflict or difficulties with anger. You make be having relational issues or hard decisions to make or you may have lost your authentic voice – our aim is to find ways to face into and deal with the realities of life, to look into the issues while exploring new potentials, new roles, healthy reflections and choices… and move toward possible futures.

This includes managing the big changes or life-stage transitions (that come to us all) finding meaning in challenging situations, support for being yourself, and living courageously according to your integral values. Our work is also the collaborative surfacing of repressed, conflicted, tabooed or unwanted shadow aspects of self while creating a space for expanding awareness and free attention – the work is integrative.

My approach is informed by meditational, existential, psychodynamic, relational and trauma informed gestalt therapy (7 years training), but also depth psychology, social anthropology and transpersonal psychology. An important part of my approach is to explore what is within awareness so that what is out of awareness can emerge into consciousness.

Bringing the unconscious into awareness heals internal splits and restores ease to conflicted or tangled energy which creates a more balanced relationship with a more expanded and embodied psyche. This can be portrayed as gently bringing what is hidden into the open; moving from darkness to light, or even what is deadened back to life.

This in turn facilitates maturation, balance or seasoning of the personality; provides relief from inner turmoil, completes the task of emotional suffering and eases psychic pain.

 

As children we are wounded and our positive or organic development interfered with – which can set us on a path of alienated development; this traumatic history is often behind present time crises.

However, in terms of spiritual growth we must distinguish between the wounding of the child and the tasks and challenges that face we adults. We face accident, illness and ageing, bereavement and loss of important friends and lovers (their abusive history can come back to haunt them); disease (covid), disaster and war; among other deep psychological and social tensions inherent in the human condition.

While the wounded child needs self-affirming, loving therapy and care – the wider trials of adult life can call for transcendence, a deep change of heart, a letting go of the poisons that sicken the soul such as resentment and outrage, existential fears or subtle attachment to suffering or self-image. Sometimes the situations of adult life can restimulate wounds and trauma and we have to sit with the whole catastrophe and, carefully differentiate what belongs to the child and what belongs to the more resourced adult. In a sense we may be embarking on a spiritual walk together, for a time.

Furthermore, as spirit awakens in us, we may find ourselves in a spiritual emergency; a developmental moment where we must shed what no longer serves our soul and spirit. Most of this is inner work we may need to jettison nothing or no-one in the outer world for the healing to begin, there is no need to act out what needs to be integrated…this is what C.J. Jung, one of our transpersonal teachers, called Individuation and the vast paradox of becoming who you already are.

 

Coming soon…

 

 

Shaheed – A Relational Meditation

Making Transpersonal Medicine through ‘Radical Participation’ in Ritual