Time Reclaimed
The name of my counselling and psychotherapy practice reflects my belief that one of the first steps towards wellbeing lies in claiming back time for self-reflection, exploration and experimentation from the busy routines of our lives. "Time Reclaimed" is also a reference to the final volume of Marcel Proust's "Remembrances of Things Past", titled "Time Regained", which describes the coming together of a life-long search for meaning, identity and belonging in a world full of change, unpredictability, grief and loss. The Proustian notion of the healing power of memory, creativity and story telling in the face of the passage of time appealed to me as a reader and its appeal resonated once again when I became a therapist.
I decided to call my practice "Time Reclaimed" rather than "Time Regained" because counselling and psychotherapy offer possibilities rather than certainties — a space to see what might happen if we pause to take stock of ourselves, others and our emotions rather than simply filling our time and our lives with one thing after the next. In psychotherapy we can reclaim some time for calm thought, and although we can't regain the past, thinking about past experience can offer some clues to a better present.
"Time Reclaimed" also opens up the idea that while psychotherapists require a degree of specialist knowledge and rigorous training, the issues and themes of psychotherapy are neither contained by neat diagnostic categories, nor confined to pathology, but are rather shared in varying degrees by all. As such, literature and the arts can provide an additional vantage point to that offered by the medical model — one in which nuances of character and context, together with imagination and creativity can come more fully into play.
