Approach

My mission

I am passionate about providing psychotherapy, helping people to understand themselves better, and promoting healthy growth and development to alleviate suffering. My approach to therapy is ambitious in not only wanting to help you to reduce your distressing symptoms but to help you to improve your relationships and your quality of life.

My goals are always to help you to benefit and get the best from therapy, helping you to make changes for the better that help you to feel better. I work in a respectful and collaborative manner where the alliance between client and therapist is fundamental to establishing safety and trust. Forming a healthy and collaborative working alliance between therapist and client that work together in a true partnership, is a central feature of my approach. 

I work at a pace that is suitable, safe, and from within a framework that can usefully support you to step slightly outside of your comfort zone, in order to facilitate healthy development and growth. Whilst psychotherapy can sometimes be challenging, it can also be extremely rewarding, and set you on the path to freedom from perpetual suffering.

Clinical Expertise

I have extensive experience of working with complex trauma in the NHS, and have worked with people who are diagnostically said to have emotionally unstable or borderline personality disorder. These psychiatric diagnoses can sometimes be debilitating or pejorative and are usually underpinned by repeated experiences of multiple traumas occurring in childhood or in the life span. Symptoms accompanying psychiatric diagnosis are often indicative of unresolved past traumas. These symptoms can perpetuate further problems and attempts in resolving problems can sometimes lead to further problems creating a stuck cycle.  I have a lot of experience of working with people who are particularly stuck, or who may have chronic physical health symptoms that are not always responsive to traditional forms of treatment. My approach is mindful of the body in relation to unprocessed or repressed trauma that can manifest as physical health symptoms or physical pain. The approach that I use can work effectively with depression and anxiety, as well as for people that have habitually or unknowingly cut off from their feelings.

My Specialisms

COMPLEXITY: Working with complex problems or people who may be stuck; especially in relation to unresolved developmental experiences of childhood abuse leading to significant difficulties in later life, or to be at the root of psychiatric symptoms or diagnoses.

TRAUMA: Specialism in trauma focussed work; attachment trauma, complex trauma and repressed trauma in the body. Working with the mind and the body; disassociation, disconnection, depersonalisation, unconscious anxiety.

EMOTIONS: Addressing internal blockages to emotions and facilitating healthy regulation of emotion. Regulating anxiety. Fear reduction, resourcing self soothing system in response to threat. Distress tolerance.

SOMATISATION: Some psychosomatic, auto immune and medically unexplained conditions e.g. chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, IBS, physical tension/pain, tension headaches, insomnia, when connected to chronic stress and anxiety, underpinned by experiences of historical abuse, repressed trauma and repressed emotions.

RELATIONSHIP AND LIFE ISSUES: Difficulties people experience in relation to self, others, and the world; stress, fear, anxiety, anger, shame, rage, guilt, sadness, grief, loss, loneliness, despair, mistrust, isolation, abandonment, rejection, hopelessness, helplessness, entrapment, low self-esteem, self-criticism, impulsivity, over reacting, acting out, striving, perfectionism, poor self-care, self-neglect, self-harm.

What to expect.

When you contact me, I usually invite you to a free initial telephone consultation for approximately 30 minutes. Here, I will invite you to tell me about what difficulties you experience and for us to think together about how I might be able to help you. From there, if we think we could work together, we can decide whether it would be appropriate for you to take part in an assessment or a trial therapy.  The process is outlined below:

Assessment and Formulation

The assessment can take last for one to two hours. The purpose of the assessment is to help us understand how your difficulties began and identify factors that might trigger or keep your difficulties going, as well as learning about what strengths you have that can help you to stay well and recover. From this we can develop a shared psychological formulation about your difficulties and design an individually tailored treatment plan to address them. if we decide that we want to continue working together, we will set some mutually agreed aims and objectives for us to work towards in continuing therapy.

Trial therapy

The trial therapy can last for two to three hours and provide you with an experience of receiving this type of psychotherapy.  The trial therapy can function as part assessment, enabling us to hear more about your difficulties and how they originated, identifying a clear focus on the present sources of difficulty, and helping us to see how you experience some of the interventions on offer from within this approach.  There will be a focus on looking inwardly to help us understand how you might recognise and experience anxiety in your body, how you might experience helping relationships and hold distress inside, and for us to learn about any blockages in place that might be inhibiting the experience of healthy emotions or unknowingly be contributing to your difficulties.  It is possible in some cases for positive changes to be gained from the trial therapy alone. Please enquire about this for more information.

Therapy sessions

From either assessment or trial therapy; we will have developed a shared understanding about the sources of difficulty and will have some idea about what you might like to do if you want to address them. If we decide that we want to work together, we can set up a treatment plan and provide you with some therapy sessions. I can be flexible in the provision of sessions where the duration of how long we work for is decided by you. I am open to providing you with sessions in the short or longer term, as long as they are helpful and you are benefitting from them. I can be flexible providing either weekly or fortnightly sessions depending on your situation and finances. Sometimes people prefer to book on a session by session basis where progress is reviewed as we go. It may also be possible to block book for a number of sessions and receive a greater ‘chunk’ of therapy in a shorter space of time.

When sessions take place

Therapy sessions are available midweek in the evenings and during the day, all day, every Friday. All sessions will be taking place online for the foreseeable future.

Fees

£90 per hour

£135 for 90 minutes. (Available weekly or fortnightly)

Fees are inclusive of your case being supervised periodically by world leading experts and practitioners in ISTDP. Additional time is provided to review and process video recordings of your case in between sessions.