The heart of my stance
My work is driven by my passion: promoting the individual well-being of every person who comes to see me. I welcome you into my space for ideas, growth and openness. My approach is grounded in appreciation, respect for human dignity and goal orientation. I understand symptoms as carriers of meaningful messages – often linked to needs, values and experiences from your life, including the coping and problem-solving strategies you have developed over time. It matters to me to understand, from your perspective, what well-being and development would look like. . I encourage autonomous decision-making by providing clarity about what is currently important. Together, we identify steps that are both meaningful and manageable – and that have an impact you can notice and review.
A hypnosystemic, constructivist framework
My hypnosystemic approach is inspired by the work of Gunther Schmidt and Milton Erickson. . I work with existing tools – language, framework of meaning, values, emotions and lived experience, strength, and the way your attention is currently focused. We promote desirable change through what is personally meaningful to you. We recognise meaning by noticing which feelings signal importance. By distinguishing between the unwanted experience and your preferred alternative, a clear direction for change emerges. From a hypnosystemic, constructivist perspective – drawing in particular on thinkers such as Niklas Luhmann, Humberto Maturana, and Gregory Bateson – I keep the focus on developmental potential and on perspectives that are helpful now and in the future.
Personal selection of influences
Drawing on Fritz B. Simon, I understand symptoms as meaningful, self-organised attempts at solution in which language frames the reality we experience. The solution-focused approach of Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg sharpens my awareness of exceptions that show strengths that we can deliberately enhance. Paul Watzlawick invites a sensitivity to the liveability of individual realities, and to the fact that one cannot not communicate. Virginia Satir inspires the focus to discover congruence, meaning of family roles, and relationship dynamics within processes of change. Building on the work of Silvan S. Tomkins, Donald L. Nathanson, and Don R. Catherall, we make sense of the subtle signals of emotions and affect. They serve as inner orientation and shape how we experience situations, how we see and approach others, how we regulate ourselves, and in turn how we respond. The language of affect can lead us to comprehending what is essential to us in light of our experiences and encounters – for example appreciation, pride, and joy – and how this influences the way we see ourselves and others. Helm Stierlin, in turn, encourages an understanding of autonomy in relationship, rather than autonomy against relationship.
Medical and neurobiological perspectives, body memory, and Salutogenesis
Medical and neurobiological perspectives, such as those associated with researchers like Robert Sapolsky, deepen our insights about stress and self-regulation processes. Aaron Antonovsky’s concept of salutogenesis draws our attention to comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness along with an ongoing flow of a “health-illness continuum” of life. This supports greater personal agency, rather than a purely mechanical idea of “fixing” what is wrong. Embodiment approaches, as described by Tschacher and Storch, emphasise the importance of wealth of our body’s memory and how it can influence our health and wellbeing.
My studies in human medicine (Heidelberg Medical Faculty) and music therapy (IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems) combine these levels in a pragmatic approach: body, consciousness and relationship harmoniously strive for health, growth and recovery in a psychotherapeutic context.
Perception of mankind
I see people as competent and capable of development – even in the most difficult phases of life. In this spirit of dignity, I find Viktor E. Frankl’s concepts of meaning and responsibility provide steadiness and direction. I also align with Carl Rogers’ core attitudes of authenticity, appreciation, and empathy in human interaction.
Therapeutic progress is also achieved through the effect of therapeutic relationship – especially when it is imbued with safety, clarity, and respect.
I see it as my responsibility to hold up these values for you and to provide you with steps that are valuable, coherent and feasible in order to enable you to act and as a result reconnect with vitality and joy of life.
My Services
I help you draw on your strengths and make meaningful, real-life changes – within my scope of the structured therapeutic space of safeness, attuned resonance, and evidence-informed, goal-oriented approaches.