Hey, well done, you’ve made it this far.

I’m going to tell you about me, and what it will be like if you make an appointment with me, so maybe it might be a little bit less daunting to take the next step and fill out the enquiry form.

Your experience with me

Gentle is by far the most common personality characteristic people describe me as. Calm is a close second, but that hasn’t always been true! I was more like a duck swimming serenely on the surface of the water with its feet paddling madly beneath the water. Nowadays, I’m much more like a duck, above and below the water – if you catch my meaning – but that’s after quite a bit of therapy (catch the subtle product placement there!).

Sessions are usually pretty laid back. They often involve laughing, lounging, or just making yourself comfortable. Feet on chairs or jammies in video sessions are completely okay.

I want you to feel like you can simply be yourself. You don’t need to have everything worked out before you arrive. You don’t need to explain why something mattered or convince me that your experiences were significant enough. My job is to understand your world as you experienced it.

Here are the things I think are really important in therapy

My aim is to ‘get you’ as deeply as possible. I certainly don’t always get there, but I’m always trying. Many of the people I work with are insightful and already understand a lot about themselves. They know where their patterns come from. What they’re looking for is someone who can understand those patterns at a deeper level and help them move beyond insight into lasting change.

If you say it, I believe it. No ifs, no buts. If it came out of your mouth, then I believe it. I don’t care what ‘his’, ‘her’ or ‘their’ perspective might be, or what your ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ might say if they were here. We’re not in court. We are not testing evidence. It’s your perspective and your reality that is paramount and my only concern.

Judgement, as in my possible judgement of you, doesn’t have any room in sessions. I’m in an open state when I’m doing therapy; judgement has no place to enter. 

I care about my clients and I invest in your healing. You are not numbers to me.

If you feel it, then it’s right. Your feelings are never wrong. They can be out of proportion or under proportion, but they aren’t wrong. They have important information, so I’ll always suggest paying attention and seeing what they have to tell you.

I see your struggles through a trauma lens. Rather than seeing your reactions, relationship patterns or ways of coping as the problem, I’m interested in understanding what happened to you and how your mind and body adapted to survive it. Understanding those adaptations helps us make sense of why certain patterns continue to show up today.

Your psychotherapy experience with me

At the start, sessions will probably be what you expect from a counselling session. We’ll do a lot of talking about what brought you here.

If you have trauma or a lot has happened in your life, you’ll probably hear me say something like, “You don’t have to tell me everything all at once. It’ll all come out in bits and pieces when it needs to.”

You might also hear me say, “Let’s start with what is going on in your life right now. What feels hard at the moment?” Of course, if you already know exactly where you want to begin, then it’s over to you. It’s your session after all.

People come to me knowing there is a connection between their past and the difficulties they’re experiencing today. My role isn’t simply to understand what happened. It’s to help you work through the emotional experiences that continue to influence your relationships, your sense of yourself, and the way you respond to life now.

Emotion Focused Therapy

I use Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT), which essentially means that I prioritise your emotional experience and your emotional processing as the most important part of psychological healing and wellbeing.

Many people have spent years understanding their patterns intellectually, but insight alone hasn’t created the change they’re looking for. EFT helps us go beyond understanding and work directly with the emotional experiences that sit underneath those patterns.

Below are some of the experiences you may have in therapy. However, you’re always the boss! So if something is not your cup of tea, your therapy won’t involve that.

• Helping you reconnect with your emotions, or reconnect more with your emotions.
• Becoming more accepting of your emotions and understanding what they’re telling you.
• Helping you get in touch with what is painful, how it affects you, and connecting with other emotions that can help heal that pain.

EFT is experiential, which means instead of just talking about things that have happened, I’ll help you actively connect with and process your emotions in the session. The approach often uncovers underlying experiences that aren’t easily accessible through talking alone.

If any of that connects with you or piques your interest, go ahead and fill out the enquiry form. There’s no obligation. Just tell me a little about yourself and what’s been going on. I’ll send you some further information about my services, including costs, and you’re very welcome to ask any questions you might have.