Counselling and psychotherapy in Singapore
You may be doing well by most visible measures, and yet feel you are carrying something you have never said out loud.
I’m Joseph Yap. I work with adults who want somewhere to pay closer attention to their own experience — not only to understand themselves, but to notice what is happening within them, between them and others, and in the world they are living in.
Get in touch →
People who write to me often arrive in one of two places. Sometimes you can feel that something is off but cannot quite name it. Life has kept moving — work, relationships, responsibilities — and by the time that feeling becomes difficult to ignore, a lot may have happened that is difficult to disentangle.
Or perhaps you have already thought hard about yourself. You can name the pattern precisely. You know where it came from, recognise it as it starts, and still find yourself living it anyway.
You may also have tried to override it through strategies, willpower, or learning more about yourself. These help, up to a point. You have probably found the point.
What tends to be missing is not another explanation, or another way of overriding yourself. It is somewhere to be with what is happening while it is happening, with someone else there, and slowly enough that you can experience more of what is actually going on, rather than only talk about it.
That is often where change begins. Not with another explanation, but by being able to stay with something you may already know.
How I work
The work follows the person, rather than fitting you to the model.
Much of therapy is talking. But we go slowly enough that you can notice what is happening while you speak — a tightening somewhere, a tendency to want to skip past something, a shift in tone, an image or a feeling that arrives before the words for it do.
I pay attention to experience, relationship and context. The aim is not to become unaffected by life. It is to have more room in how you meet it.
How I work →
About
I’m Joseph Yap, a counsellor and psychotherapist based in Singapore.
I have spent about a decade working as a counsellor, much of it alongside young people, families, teachers and other professionals in schools. That work has shaped how I understand people: rarely in isolation, and seldom apart from the relationships and circumstances in which their lives have unfolded.
Over the years I have trained in systemic and experiential approaches to psychotherapy, and increasingly found myself interested less in applying the right technique than in becoming more able to meet the person in front of me.
I continue to practise, supervise, study and write about the work.
More about me →Writing
Notes on therapy, relationships, culture, education and the ways we make sense of ourselves in the worlds we live in.
It is a place for questions I am still thinking about, not only conclusions I have reached.
Read my writings →
What I have come to believe about suffering, change, and the work of the practitioner. The longest thing I have written, and the ground the shorter pieces stand on.
Read →
The first arrow is pain, and some of it is unavoidable. The second is the one we add ourselves.
Read →
The opposite of suffering is not a life without pain. It is closer to the relative ease of making your move when life asks for it.
Read →
Supervision
Supervision can make room for the case, certainly, but also for the practitioner: what a client evokes in you, what happens in the relationship, questions of power and culture, the things you find yourself avoiding, and how your own way of practising is developing.
Explore supervision →Practicalities
Beginning
You do not need to know exactly what you want to work on before getting in touch.
If something here resonates, you can write to me. Tell me as much or as little as feels useful. I will reply, and we can decide whether a first meeting makes sense.
Get in touch →
Counselling and psychotherapy in Singapore
You may be doing well by most visible measures, and yet feel you are carrying something you have never said out loud.
I’m Joseph Yap. I work with adults who want somewhere to pay closer attention to their own experience — not only to understand themselves, but to notice what is happening within them, between them and others, and in the world they are living in.
Get in touch →
People who write to me often arrive in one of two places. Sometimes you can feel that something is off but cannot quite name it. Life has kept moving — work, relationships, responsibilities — and by the time that feeling becomes difficult to ignore, a lot may have happened that is difficult to disentangle.
Or perhaps you have already thought hard about yourself. You can name the pattern precisely. You know where it came from, recognise it as it starts, and still find yourself living it anyway.
You may also have tried to override it through strategies, willpower, or learning more about yourself. These help, up to a point. You have probably found the point.
What tends to be missing is not another explanation, or another way of overriding yourself. It is somewhere to be with what is happening while it is happening, with someone else there, and slowly enough that you can experience more of what is actually going on, rather than only talk about it.
That is often where change begins. Not with another explanation, but by being able to stay with something you may already know.
The work follows the person, rather than fitting you to the model.
Much of therapy is talking. But we go slowly enough that you can notice what is happening while you speak — a tightening somewhere, a tendency to want to skip past something, a shift in tone, an image or a feeling that arrives before the words for it do.
I pay attention to experience, relationship and context. The aim is not to become unaffected by life. It is to have more room in how you meet it.
I’m Joseph Yap, a counsellor and psychotherapist based in Singapore.
I have spent about a decade working as a counsellor, much of it alongside young people, families, teachers and other professionals in schools. That work has shaped how I understand people: rarely in isolation, and seldom apart from the relationships and circumstances in which their lives have unfolded.
Over the years I have trained in systemic and experiential approaches to psychotherapy, and increasingly found myself interested less in applying the right technique than in becoming more able to meet the person in front of me.
I continue to practise, supervise, study and write about the work.
Notes on therapy, relationships, culture, education and the ways we make sense of ourselves in the worlds we live in.
It is a place for questions I am still thinking about, not only conclusions I have reached.
What I have come to believe about suffering, change, and the work of the practitioner. The longest thing I have written, and the ground the shorter pieces stand on.
The first arrow is pain, and some of it is unavoidable. The second is the one we add ourselves.
The opposite of suffering is not a life without pain. It is closer to the relative ease of making your move when life asks for it.
Supervision
Supervision can make room for the case, certainly, but also for the practitioner: what a client evokes in you, what happens in the relationship, questions of power and culture, the things you find yourself avoiding, and how your own way of practising is developing.
In person in Singapore
Usually fortnightly
About an hour per session
S$160
You do not need to know exactly what you want to work on before getting in touch.
If something here resonates, you can write to me. Tell me as much or as little as feels useful. I will reply, and we can decide whether a first meeting makes sense.
Get in touch →