Home Dr Juraj Kralik, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist
Services – Psychotherapy for Children
– Psychotherapy for Adolescents and Young People
– Therapeutic support for Parents
– Supervision for Professionals
About – My Experience and Approach
– Qualifications and Professional Membership
Blog
Contact/Location – Chelsea: 50 Sloane Avenue, Suite 210, London SW3 3DD (The building entrance is on Thomas More Walk)
– Hayes: 12 Station Approach, Hayes, Bromley, Kent, BR2 7EH
Would like to have a contact form somewhere, my contact details of course, an email address?
About
I am a Highly Specialist Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist with extensive experience of working with children, young people and their families, offering safe therapeutic space to process complex feelings and experiences.
I had worked in various educational settings, including early years centres and a secondary EBD school, for over 10 years before qualifying as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist. In my clinical training I had spent another six years observing and later offering treatments to very small children, even infants, but also to school-aged children and older adolescents in crisis. I have worked extensively with their parents and families.
To this day I work as part of a busy multidisciplinary team in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health service in south London.
All of this work experience and in-depth training have given me a real sense of developmental journey through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, which I now use to inform my way of working therapeutically with children and young people, understanding and addressing issues relevant to their age and stage of development.
I specialise in emotional development, for example separation anxiety and anger management. I work with children and young people who struggle to control and express their negative emotions in safe ways, helping them to identify various sources and triggers for their anxiety and emotional dysregulation, that way extending their range of emotional expressions beyond bodily ways, such as self-harm and violent risk-taking behaviour. This way of working therapeutically also deepens their emotional knowledge of themselves, allowing for further insight and growth in their ways of relating to others.
I offer treatments tailored to individual needs of children and young people as well as their families. I focus on helping all to sustain and benefit from mutual relationships. These treatments vary in length and depth of exploration depending on most present needs and difficulties.
My approach is exploratory but holding, imaginative but focused on the most pressing issues, always building on areas of strength already present. The aim is to create a stronger sense of the child or young person, within themselves but also for their family and wider community.
Qualifications and professional membership
Clinical doctorate in Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with IPCAPA/bpf and Anna Freud Centre/UCL
Postgraduate Diploma in Psychoanalytic Observational Studies with Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust and University of East London
I am a full member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists, British Psychotherapy Foundation and British Psychoanalytic Council
(There are a few logos to be added to the bottom of the site, which I will get for you- to do with these organisations and regulating bodies.)
Location
I offer weekend appointments at a secure and comfortable consulting room located in Chelsea.
I also offer weekday daytime and evening appointments in Hayes, near Bromley at BR2.
Please do get in touch to enquire further.
Online
I offer online sessions via various videoplatforms. – I wonder how to make this obvious on the website??
Fees
Fees vary depending on the type of treatment offered. I also have a limited number of reduced fee vacancies so please do get in touch to find out more.
Psychotherapy for Children (on the landing page with a pic?)
The early years are full of growth and excitement but also fears and difficult developmental tasks. Sleep difficulties, separation anxiety, sibling rivalry and conflict are some of the ordinary challenges that children need help with. At times, however, children have to face much bigger challenges, such as a loss of a close one or serious illness in the family. Or they might feel that something is not quite right with them; they worry about things a bit more, having to ask about or do certain things again and again. Or perhaps they have not been talking and asking about it at all but something has changed, and not just for them. They have been getting on but low moods tend to return, anxiety and panic attacks set in from time to time.
Psychotherapy for Children (continued on the page)
Psychotherapy treatment offers safe and regular space for each child to explore what their minds have been putting them through. They might discover that they have been very avoidant of certain emotions, blocking them out but having them return and surprise them when least convenient. For example they might be lashing out at close ones or themselves and no one seems to understand why.
In treatment, using toys, pen and paper or their words to explore past and present experiences, they might discover that what they have always thought and felt about certain things and people were just some of their thoughts and feelings. For example, they might realise that unbeknownst to them, they have been very angry about something or someone but could not ever tell what or who or why that was. Gaining insight into these thoughts and memories but also processing them emotionally with a trusted person can bring enormous relief to their lives, not just on the inside, but also within the family and all their relationships.
Psychotherapy for Adolescents and Young People (on the landing page)
Leaving those early fears behind can be even more daunting when having to face the wider world, with all that is happening in its political arena. To engage with and experience all the exams, job prospects and relationship issues takes some courage and determination. The risks are great for every adolescent but so is the opportunity to forge a new identity and become who they really want to be.
At times, however, this developmental work can stutter and pause, causing a real difficulty to communicate to others what is going for the young person, their family in particular. They might be more prone to angry refusals or panic attacks that keep them isolated in their bed or house. Their minds racing with all kind of new thoughts, their bodies full of new sensations and yet they feel so stuck.
Psychotherapy for Adolescents and Young People (continued on the page)
Psychotherapy treatment offers safe and regular space for adolescents and young people to revisit these powerful exchanges with peers and family members, as well as their own feelings about them. This space and therapeutic relationship built within it offers them a chance to experience and work out various new ways of responding to strong feelings and emotional exchanges, giving them a wider choice of response for the future. Close attention is paid to how these feelings and reactions have developed over time, increasing emotional insight and imagination that way too.
Adolescents and young people often describe the volatile nature of their emotions, feeling always on the go, from high up to very low, which is very confusing for them but even harder for others to navigate their way around. Having a trusted person that can follow their internal struggle as well as attend to their external experiences from some distance but with great care can bring certain peace and stability to their minds too.
Therapeutic support for Parents (on the landing page)
All of the developmental challenges of childhood and adolescence run in parallel to parenting tasks and concerns. Putting them to sleep, getting them dressed for school, later talking to them about their intimate thoughts and wishes are just some of the parenting challenges.
Every decision brings a reaction, silent or violent, every feeling finds its way to them, whether they bounce it back in anger or embrace in satisfaction. Similarly, many old feelings resurface for parents; memories of what their parents would say or do and how that made them feel and react.
Navigating this multi-layered emotional space of past and present relationships, knowing whose feelings one is dealing with as a parent at any given time can be very exhausting, even confusing. When managed, it is extremely rewarding. When not, it can feel so burdensome that one might begin to switch off or overact and then get flooded by regret and guilty feelings.
Therapeutic support for Parents (continued on the page)
Psychotherapy treatment offers safe and regular space not just to children and adolescents, but also their parents. When things get too difficult to manage for a child or adolescent, it is bound to have impact on their parents, perhaps causing ruptures in their relating, further complicating things for the whole family.
Parallel parenting support to parents of children and adolescents in treatment aims to alleviate these anxieties as well as strengthen the family relationships by attending to present difficulties and relationships but also past developmental journeys. This support offers the parents a chance to learn more about their children’s communication and difficulties but also themselves and their ways of managing the family life. All of this is worked out in the initial meeting and assessment, taking into account the nature of difficulties and wishes of those involved in treatment.
Supervision for Professionals
Working with children, young people and their families within clinical and non-clinical settings challenges each professional to offer their knowledge and skills but also emotional resources. This can be very daunting and requires support of the colleagues and the whole team.
Psychoanalytic supervision offers further support to professionals seeking to deepen their understanding of the clients and their families as well as their own presence within the working environment. This way of understanding one’s professional life offers a great opportunity to deepen one’s personal knowledge and emotional resilience.
..Not sure how exactly this services landing and individual pages would look like, hence the text might be all together I guess. It will be much easier for me to edit when I see it.
Hope that’s ok.