My approach to therapy is very practical: I think that it should free you from symptoms and distress and also enable you to do things that you couldn’t do before, to feel real happiness, to have warm, supportive relationships, if you do not already, and a fulfilling life.
If you have had therapy before, you may find working with me quite different. I will answer all your questions and help you to understand yourself and make sense of your life, target the root causes of difficulties in the present and help your brain to rewire and create more adaptive networks. This can be done in many different ways, but EMDR is the quickest and most user-friendly. You will learn to calm anxiety and make yourself feel better and stronger when you need to. You will also discover or rediscover the skills and capacities that will enable you to stand up for yourself and to feel alive, peaceful, competent, confident and connected in day-to-day life.
There has been a paradigm shift in psychotherapy over recent decades, and we now have a much clearer, more specific understanding of how unresolved negative experiences shape us and our beliefs about life, and how they can be healed.
The word ‘trauma’ often seems too big for people’s experiences, but up-to-date, trauma-informed psychotherapy understands most psychological distress in the present as based on unresolved trauma, not only of commission (obvious trauma) but also of omission: what should have happened during childhood but did not, eg not being seen, not being valued, at least enough of the time; having caregivers who could not help us to handle our emotions; not feeling safe, having no-one to turn to – unresolved negative experiences that many people hesitate to call ‘trauma’, but that shape our self-worth, self-confidence and the ways in which we sabotage ourselves.
The way I work integrates many different modalities, including the most up-to-date trauma treatment models: integrative, relational psychotherapy, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, EMDR, Attachment-Focused EMDR, ego state therapy, the Structural Dissociation Model, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, yoga therapy and transpersonal psychotherapy. As an EMDR Europe Accredited Consultant, I weave EMDR into my work to enhance and accelerate every other modality.
My areas of specialisation are:
- Difficulties in relationships
- Inability to make a decision, or to do things that you want to do, ‘stuckness’, sabotaging yourself
- Acute or recurring anxiety or depression, panic attacks, nightmares, suicidal thoughts
- Phobias
- Not knowing who you are or what you want, or not being able to assert yourself
- Emotional, physical or sexual abuse
- PTSD
- CPTSD or complex trauma, otherwise known as developmental or attachment trauma, dissociation, working with dissociative parts, ego state therapy
- Bereavement, too much loss or change, loss of meaning or purpose
- EMDR clinical supervision/consultation