Individual Therapy
Do your emotions feel frightening, confusing or overwhelming, shut down, inaccessible or numb? Do you feel anxious a lot of the time? Or depressed and devoid of feelings? Emotions can feel scary, either like they’re too much and need to be shut down and avoided, or they cascade over us and feel uncontrollable.
Emotions are information about our needs, wants and boundaries. Many of us are not taught how to understand our emotions, how they affect us and how to receive the information they’re giving us.
I'm here to support you to understand, and reconnect to, your emotional self, from understanding unmet attachment needs, childhood trauma, relational trauma, narcissistic abuse, neuro diverse emotions, anxiety, overwhelm, and more. Guiding you in how you can feel safer and more confident in supporting your emotional needs.
I can explore with you how you felt growing up, the coping mechanisms you developed, even if your childhood wasn’t traumatic or didn’t feel problematic. As children we develop coping mechanisms for how to deal with the adults and peers in our life, no parent is perfect, we all make mistakes, and peers and siblings are as lost as we are. Children often create ways of coping that don’t help them in adult life. Learning to understand without judgement or blame can positively shift our relationship with ourself, our emotions and our loved ones.
As a relationship therapist I work supporting clients individually through relationship issues and recovery from domestic abuse. Relationships can be painful and confusing. From relationships with partners, parents and friends. It can be hard to know if difficult behaviours are attachment issues, emotional immaturity, difficult dynamics we are also contributing to, or narcissistic abuse. It can be difficult to understand our own feelings, why we say or do things we don't want to, that hurt ourselves or others. I help bring clarity and understanding, and heal pain with safety and connection.
Individual/Trauma Informed Counselling
Online Only
£50 for a 50 minute session
My Approaches
Felt Sense
Working with the felt sense is learning to connect with our emotions in our body. All of our emotions begin in our body and all of our experiences are stored in our body. The shame you once felt might be a rush through the body, or feel like a sinking in the gut. Fear might leave you feeling frozen, or feel like a tight grip in your chest. A family members safety when you were young might radiate a calm, warm feeling. These feelings are our emotions. Trauma can cause them to feel overwhelming, meaning we often either shut down from them or feel engulfed by them. Felt sense meditation allows you to slow down, connect in safely and bring curiosity so that you can feel safer in your emotions. I will guide you to explore the emotions and bring in regulation tools if needed.
Exploration of Parts
According to Internal Family Systems (IFS) the mind consists of a core “Self” and multiple “Parts” that interact like a family system. Parts hold distinct thoughts, emotions, and motivations—including "managers" (proactive protectors), "firefighters" (reactive protectors), and "exiles" (wounded, vulnerable parts). Every part has a positive intention, often aiming to protect the individual, even if their actions are harmful. Exploring, naming and working with these parts with clients is a helpful way to bring more compassion and understanding to complex emotions. It can support understanding complex and conflicting emotions. It compliments self compassion work, the goal of exploring parts is seeing that all parts of our self are trying to care for us, protect us or take care of painful emotions for us, even if they are doing it in a way that harms us. Using compassionate dialogue we can soften, welcome, alleviate and calm hurt parts of ourselves.
Nervous System Regulation
Our central nervous system comprises of the Sympathetic Nervous System SNS (fight/flight) and Parasympathetic Nervous System PNS (rest/digest). With prolonged trauma and CPTSD the Sympathetic Nervous System can become overactive and our Parasympathetic Nervous System loses strength. This causes nervous system dysregulation, leaving us feeling stuck in fight/flight. We experience this as anxiety, and overwhelm. It can feel like rushes of anxiety, shame, fear or quick changes in emotional states. It can be a difficult to feel able to relax or feel safe. Emotional tolerance is greatly reduced. Using various nervous system regulation tools daily builds up the Parasympathetic Nervous System leaving us feeling less anxious and more at ease, bringing you back in to more emotional regulation.
Inner Child Work
When we experience trauma, younger parts of ourselves can feel stuck, trapped, alone or rejected within us. Connecting with our inner child, noticing, listening and nurturing can help to free us from overwhelm, fear, anxiety and self loathing. Through guided meditation we can connect in with stuck, hurt or fearful moments from childhood, bringing connection and healing.
EFT Tapping
EFT Tapping is a tool that combines tapping on acupressure points using cognitive focusing to reduce emotional dysregulation. It involves tapping on specific meridian points on the face and body with fingertips while acknowledging a negative emotion or physical issue, aiming to calm the nervous system and lower cortisol. Using this alongside therapy supports reducing emotional overwhelm when exploring trauma.
Self Compassion
Slowly building compassion towards ourselves creates new neural pathways in our brain. Learning, over time, to support critical parts of ourself with kindness and validation soothes anxiety and relieves depression. When using self compassion I will always meet you where you are at. If compassion feels impossible, that’s ok, that’s where we begin.
What Happens Next
Firstly I will offer a free 15 minute phone call with you. This offers a chance for you to get to know me, share a little of what you’re going through and answer any questions you might have about how I can support you.
If you are happy to go ahead I will book a first session where I will run through a short assessment, have time to learn in depth what you are struggling with and if you wish we can try a nervous system regulation technique or have a chance to do a short felt sense meditation
If there are any risk factors I will discuss a longer assessment period and share possible avenues you can take if counselling isn’t the right path at this time or if there is extra support needed while we work together.
It is important that feel held and understood by me, I will gladly invite any thoughts or feelings on how I am supporting you and if there is anything that you would like to change or explore.
