Sandra Elsdon Vigon: Psychotherapy
Sandra Elsdon Vigon was born and raised in England; Sandra lived in California for more than thirty years moving back to London via Italy two years ago.
Sandra has an M.A. in Counselling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California. She is also licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist by the State of California and completed six years post graduate analyst training in Analytic Psychology at the C.G.Jung Institute of Los Angeles. Although her training included Family Systems Theory, Humanistic, Gestalt Therapy and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy her main interest was in Jungian Analytic Psychotherapy. Sandra was in private practice for over twenty years in Los Angeles.
Sandra works with individuals and couples and has a particular interest in approaching her work with human suffering from a creative and soul centred perspective. This includes encouraging actual creative expression through, journaling, and collage work, painting and sculpting and also viewing life as a creative process. She provides a safe and secure environment for healing and transformation on emotional, mental and spiritual levels.
Sandra works with many individuals and couples to help them understand why their relationships, both inner and outer, don’t work.
Often we can find that we continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, never really getting to the core of why our relationships are dysfunctional. With each new relationship comes the wish and the hope that this time it will be right. However, without understanding our part in why a relationship breaks down we won’t be able break that negative patterning. Relationships are not, as we so often are told, about living happily ever after. Being in relationship gives us the opportunity to grow and develop both individually and as a couple and to create a soulful and meaningful life together. This doesn’t necessarily mean perfect! We can learn about ourselves through listening to feed back from our partner, listening to their viewpoint and needs and by clearly expressing our thoughts and feelings and by learning to compromise and share. Rather than ‘now we are one’ fantasy, two individuals come together to create a third, which is the relationship.
One of the biggest strains on a relationship can be the projection of unfulfilled needs onto our partner with an expectation that they will somehow fill what is missing in us. If we are not aware and accepting of our own needs then this can be unconsciously placed on the object of our affection and be experienced as a burden and unrealistic expectation. This one sided neediness can lead to resentment and frustration and contribute to the very thing that is dreaded, i.e: being left or rejected. This is why is it’s so important to know oneself and to learn to take responsibility for our emotional selves. Many times these patterns are formed as a repetition of early family life and parental relationships. After all, what we see and experience between our parents is the blueprint of relationship that we work from as adults.
Sandra places a strong emphasis on communication skills and learning how to voice concerns and needs in a non-critical or attacking way. Creating a dialogue to work things through and tools to deal with conflict and disagreement is emphasized.
Sandra’s Jungian approach facilitates and supports learning to trust our feelings, gut intelligence and instinctual self. She facilitates the development of the ability to resource this innate wisdom and trust that we alone know what is right for us. Many times our emotional injuries, whether from trauma, loss or abuse, cut us off from or distort access to that knowing. Working on these blocks is a core part of the therapy. Another important aspect of the way she works is dealing with both the light and dark part of our personality ‘the Shadow’. It isn’t easy to look at and take responsibility for our faults and failings, such as envy, deceit, hatred etc.but it is vital to know this dark potential. By becoming conscious of these negative possibilities we have the choice not to act them out.
A core component of the Jungian process is listening to, the unconscious self, analyzing dreams and fantasies. This helps to build a clearer picture of the individual as a whole and deeper relationship to the self. One of the ways of accessing the unconscious self is to encourage creative expression through writing, painting, dance and music to allow us to connect to our authentic self and find what really has meaning and value for us in our life. In order to begin to make clear and conscious decisions in life and realize our potential, we must first understand who we are.
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