About Dr George Blair-West
With over 25 years experience, Dr Blair-West is a medical doctor, specialising in psychiatry, who practices primarily as a ‘psychotherapist’. While, as a doctor, he can prescribe medications, this is not his primary focus as he treats conditions that are best managed at a psychological level.
He has a particular interest in 'Transformational Therapies' (e.g. EMDR & IFS) versus 'Counteractive Therapies' (e.g. CBT, Mindfulness & Acceptance & Commitment Therapy). To quote the neuroscientist James Alexander:
"Counteractive] approaches can provide the person with a new emotional learning, which then competes with the existing neurological pathway of established distress. There is no guarantee that the new emotional learning will succeed in over-powering the established distress, and the latter can often be easily triggered by environmental or cognitive cues. Transformative psychotherapies, on the other hand, work in reverse, i.e., creating changes in the deeper emotional centres of the brain, which then flow changes on to the higher thinking centres."
IS DR BLAIR-WEST RIGHT FOR YOU?
Dr Blair-West no longer practices general psychiatry and only sees patients for:
If your condition does not fall in these areas then he recommends you see Dr Brian Kirkup (at the same practice) who does practice general psychiatry. Dr Blair-West will see children and teenagers for trauma related problems only.
A psychotherapist is interested in helping people explore the origins of their distress to allow a definitive working through and resolution of the underlying problems and issues that contribute to a person experiencing recurrent problems. Be warned this work can be difficult and is a very different experience from counselling. In simple terms, psychotherapy is accelerated personal growth, but like all growth it has growing pains as we confront how we ourselves contribute to the problems we are having. For more on the differences with counselling to to the page on this here.
While psychodynamically trained (looking to the emotional origins of a problem), he utilises Compassion Focused Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing (EMDR), and Jungian Therapy, amongst other therapies, to create an integration of mind, body and soul in his clinical work.
Most recently he has developed an interest in Internal Family Systems (IFS). While IFS has been gathering a solid clinical following over the last twenty years, primarily in the USA, it is a 'young' therapy in the greater context. The first ever advanced training in IFS for clinicians was only run in Australia in 2016 by psychologist Bonnie Weiss (which Dr Blair-West was privileged to attend). For more on IFS click here.
Dr Blair-West is also the author of the bestselling Weight Loss for Food Lovers: Understanding our minds and why we sabotage our weight loss (now translated into Dutch and Chinese), a children's book on healthy emotional eating and the award-winning The Way of The Quest. For further background on his work and for information on his books and other writings visit his blogsite here.
He has a particular interest in 'Transformational Therapies' (e.g. EMDR & IFS) versus 'Counteractive Therapies' (e.g. CBT, Mindfulness & Acceptance & Commitment Therapy). To quote the neuroscientist James Alexander:
"Counteractive] approaches can provide the person with a new emotional learning, which then competes with the existing neurological pathway of established distress. There is no guarantee that the new emotional learning will succeed in over-powering the established distress, and the latter can often be easily triggered by environmental or cognitive cues. Transformative psychotherapies, on the other hand, work in reverse, i.e., creating changes in the deeper emotional centres of the brain, which then flow changes on to the higher thinking centres."
IS DR BLAIR-WEST RIGHT FOR YOU?
Dr Blair-West no longer practices general psychiatry and only sees patients for:
- Trauma, Childhood Abuse & Stress-related conditions
- Relationship/couple therapy
- Individual Psychotherapy
- Group Therapy (for relationship issues)
If your condition does not fall in these areas then he recommends you see Dr Brian Kirkup (at the same practice) who does practice general psychiatry. Dr Blair-West will see children and teenagers for trauma related problems only.
A psychotherapist is interested in helping people explore the origins of their distress to allow a definitive working through and resolution of the underlying problems and issues that contribute to a person experiencing recurrent problems. Be warned this work can be difficult and is a very different experience from counselling. In simple terms, psychotherapy is accelerated personal growth, but like all growth it has growing pains as we confront how we ourselves contribute to the problems we are having. For more on the differences with counselling to to the page on this here.
While psychodynamically trained (looking to the emotional origins of a problem), he utilises Compassion Focused Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing (EMDR), and Jungian Therapy, amongst other therapies, to create an integration of mind, body and soul in his clinical work.
Most recently he has developed an interest in Internal Family Systems (IFS). While IFS has been gathering a solid clinical following over the last twenty years, primarily in the USA, it is a 'young' therapy in the greater context. The first ever advanced training in IFS for clinicians was only run in Australia in 2016 by psychologist Bonnie Weiss (which Dr Blair-West was privileged to attend). For more on IFS click here.
Dr Blair-West is also the author of the bestselling Weight Loss for Food Lovers: Understanding our minds and why we sabotage our weight loss (now translated into Dutch and Chinese), a children's book on healthy emotional eating and the award-winning The Way of The Quest. For further background on his work and for information on his books and other writings visit his blogsite here.