Individual Online Counselling/Psychotherapy

I offer short, medium & longer term online therapy usually attending weekly or fortnightly. I welcome clients from all genders, ages, cultures, race, religions and sexual orientations. I work with a range of issues including:

• Relationship issues, including emotional dysregulation leading to outbursts.

• Opposite and same sex couple counselling,

• Work with symptoms of post traumatic stress & trauma, Adverse Childhood Experiences, emotional dysregulation and life stage transitions.

• Addictions including substance and love addictions.

• Bereavement/grief and loss

• Anger, sadness, resentfulness

• Poor concentration

• Difficulties with sleep, nightmares, flashbacks

• Avoiding places or people that bring back disturbing memories or responses

• feelings of isolation, loneliness

• Depression/low mood

• Poor confidence and low self-esteem

• Trust issues including infidelity & betrayal traumas

• Parenting issues and second/conjoined families

• Psycho-sexual related issues including sex addiction, traumas link to sexual dysfunction, confusion for example, around gender, sexual orientation; separation and divorce; loss of a relationship, stress and work-based stress

• Anxieties, including social anxiety and panic disorders and anticipatory anxieties, fear of flying etc.

• Pain management, including Hypno birthing

• Loss of direction/loss of meaning in life career and life stage transitions retirement, and ageing, redundancy and empty nest syndrome

• Parts of self that are in conflict and hold us bs in life e.g. inner critics, procrasination,, neglected parts of self

• Aftermath of a road traffic accidents; accidents within the workplace; aftermath of a death by suicide; grief and loss, victims of crime; victims of child sexual abuse or sexual assault.

• Physical symptoms that you belief have a route in trauma such as headaches, easily startled etc.

We all experience problems and symptoms at times throughout our lives. Yet when we have unprocessed trauma, symptoms attributed to the trauma can hold us back in life and impact negatively on our relationships.

Trauma disrupts our body’s natural equilibrium, freezing us into a states of either hyperarousal, or hypoarousal, or both, even at the same time.

Trauma can be painful physically, mentally and emotionally, Building an avoidant defence system is a natural response to trauma. Although protective at some point in your life, that defence system can prolong our stress response, preventing us from healing.

With specific reference to your identified treatment aims and readiness to be able to make changes, I facilitate the process of helping you with your endeavours at pace that suits you.

EMDR treatment, in conjunction with other approaches used as adjuncts, is my main theoretical approach. EMDR is an 8 phased structured approach. During the earlier phases of therapy a case conceptualisation is formulated based on history taking that is specifically related to your reported presenting issue(s). EMDR looks at trauma symptoms through the lenses of the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, The AIP model posits that negative self-beliefs (e.g., “I am not good enough”), emotion regulation problems, interpersonal problems or other core features of personality disorders are not seen as the cause of present dysfunction, but symptoms of unprocessed, inadequately stored memories of earlier life experiences that contain that affect and perspective.

My practice involves helping you to go inside yourself to observe and promote compassionate mindfulness. Gradually building greater awareness of your feelings and body sensations through leaning into them and making connections to enable you to identify and then reprocess what is stored maladaptively in mind and body. This may start by focusing on a particular concern you are experiencing right now, for example something that is causing you emotional pain. Or it could be something you fear, or a phobia Or something that carries shame, Or an addictive habit or behaviour, rumination, etc. .

Couple Counselling

Relationship issues are a common cause of emotional distress. A solid understanding of why difficulties arise can be very beneficial in getting a relationship back on track. I have been formally trained by Relate as a Couple’s Counsellor and offer online sessions to couples who need to address issues within their relationship. Being a trauma therapist I adopt a trauma-informed therapeutic approach that endeavours to address the impact past trauma on your current relationship and behaviour. It can help you to develop healthier coping mechanisms, improve communication and rebuild trust and build a stronger more resilient bond.

Supervision

I am an EMDR Europe Consultant which means I have been trained to supervisee people who have completed part of the EMDR UK training or all of the training. I also have a Diploma in Person Centred Supervision.