Samuel Waumsley, Clinical Psychologist

M.A. Clin. Psych. (UCT), 

BSocSci Hons (UCT), BA Hons (UCT), BSocSci (UCT)

084 350 2102 

samuelwaumsley@gmail.com

Practice hours: 8:00am - 5:00pm Monday to Friday

I am a registered clinical psychologist in private practice in Observatory on the slopes of Devil's Peak. I offer psychotherapy and specialise in anxiety, depression and self esteem.

I work with my patients on their situation as a whole, considering their experience as central.

Therapy is a process of discussion, consideration and problem-solving.

Approach to therapy

Areas of experience

• Anxiety, generalised and specific, including panic attacks and chronic anxiety
  
• Depression, including major depression and dysphoria
  
• Self-esteem difficulties
  
• Self-consciousness
• Setting boundaries/ assertiveness
  
• Couple's counselling
• Parent and child family therapy
  
• Jungian and Freudian dream analysis
  
• Mindfulness/ cognitive-emotional awareness
• Brief short-term interventions

Personal well-being

Personal and psychological well-being is our natural state, our default, but things happen that disconcert; things can sometimes go wrong, in our lives, in the world, in our families, even a generation ago, that impact us so heavily -as children but also as adults- that our stance psychologically is changed and sometimes determined by these experiences of stress, and trauma. Therapy is a formal way of addressing these core personal stories and traumas that we carry and the symptoms that they manifest.

• The feeling of anxiety is associated with the 'fight or flight' (and freeze) reflex we have in response to danger and threat; it's automatic and happens faster than our eyes can show us the threat; adrenaline is released before we are conscious we have registered something is a threat. This is called the 'hyphothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis', and this HPA axis can be 'chronically activated' in anxiety sufferers. Resolving and talking through and discussing the concerns that usually sit beneath anxiety feelings with someone you trust can help to address these symptoms.

• Sigmund Freud, originator of modern psychotherapy said depression was the 'psyche' or our psychological-emotional mind, finding itself hitting a dead-end, and so when we feel depressed it's our unconscious psyches giving us a sense of being stuck, and that this path or state of affairs is not feeling good, in our lives, and we can't keep doing the same thing. That said depression is dangerous, to our psychological health and physiological health, and constitutes a fundamental challenge to the self to grapple with that's very difficult and that needs to be taken seriously.  

'Making the unconscious conscious', 'mindfulness' and being aware of not only things around you, but your own reactions, automatic responses and thoughts is very useful and the basis of 'talk therapy/ psychotherapy. 

I work with patients in these steps:

1. Address the core reason for their referral 
   
2. Understand the key mechanisms and contexts underpinning their symptom cluster 
   
3. Work to build a sound sense of self, opinion and stance around core issues and reflexes of the self 
4. Maintenance and trouble-shooting as we meet to check progress and address key challenges 
   
5. Acknowledgment of progress and difficulties, philosophical questions, personal reflections

Therapy can be brief work focused on one issue or dilemma, or more long-term at 20 sessions or more where a longer-term process psychologically is scaffolded. I work centrally with adults. Anxiety, depression and self-esteem are my key areas of focus. I am 'client-centered' in terms of practice and tailor-make my therapeutic intervention to each patient.