Mrs Inês Felgueiras, MSc

I approach psychotherapy from a Constructivist perspective: people are complex, unique, and constructing themselves. For me, the continuous focus on scientific research is a source of reliability for the intervention, and as such I rooted my practice in the tradition of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (this approach has a long tradition of investing in research to understand what works and what doesn't and why, to inform the clinical approach). I now integrate the proposals from some of the approaches that developed from this tradition (mostly with ACT and DBT). However, the complexity of being a person challenges continually the assumptions from science and my initial training was very robust on the criticism to a reductionist view of a person by the traditional CBT, and highlighted the influence of one's history, physiology, and contexts. Each individual is a complex construction, aiming to find meaning and purpose while adapting to its surroundings (Constructive perspective), and difficulties can emerge that can block this process. To understand the block, we have to see the road, where what can seem to be a block, can be in fact a necessary pause and a support in the path (like feeling sad and lost after losing someone very dear). More recent scientific developments in the field indicate that in order for therapy to be more effective, it needs precision and it should consider the specificity of each person organisation, seen in a particular context (not a vacuum) and from that complex and integral view of the individual, strategically choose the focus for change in the clinical setting . This is now called a "process based approach", and it is being recognised as the reference for good practices in psychological intervention. It integrates elements from developmental psychopathology, central to the intervention with children and adolescents: the importance of contexts, their developmental history. This perspective comes to replace the tradition of evidence based approach, that focused on the creation of protocols (recipes) for each disorder. The science of clinical psychology is no longer borrowing its underhand of its role from the medical sciences, that organize around the duality of sick and health, and no longer aims to mimic the far and more influential science of psychiatry (with the strong endorsement of the pharmaceutical industry behind many of the studies that kept reinforcing this perspective). Clinical intervention is less clinical and more natural and humane: people are all different, all unique, in specific contexts with specific goals. To understand my view it is important to refer to my trajectory as a psychologist. I started working in 1997 as a clinical psychologist, with children, adolescents, and adults. Through my career, I attended trainings in different approaches that could be interesting for the clinical setting, namely systemic therapy, emotion focused therapy, hypnosis, manualized interventions from CBT approach, relaxation techniques. I have frequently been part of multidisciplinary teams where, in addition to direct clinical intervention, I coordinated the teams created to meet the needs of each case under follow-up (therapists and neurologist or psychiatrist). Collaborating in this type of teams was very rewarding, due to a more complex understanding of each client through the confluence of diverse perspectives. Having the opportunity to work with people of all ages, working with families and schools when intervening with children, offered me a complex and contextualised view of the person and their psychological problems. While I was living in Porto, I've always stayed connected with the academia, being part of research groups in fields like attachment, emotions, self and narratives (Minho University, ISMAI and Porto University). For the last 7 years that I lived in Porto, I collaborated with the Psychology Service of FPCEUP, where I received weekly supervision. In this context, I was also training psychologists and master's students in the area of ​​clinical assessment and training psychologists in some instruments for psychological evaluation. A clinical practice is for me always informed by science, but with the scepticism of knowing better than knowing all, that the complexity and mystery are part of the work, and trusting that staying humble, walking beside the person and being curious makes the human encounter more prolific than any technology that for some reason is trending at the moment.