What is therapy with me actually like?
Therapy can be a strange thing to sign up for. Even if you’ve done it before, every therapist works differently, so I think it’s useful to know what you’re actually getting into.
With me, therapy is a conversation, but it isn’t just talking. I listen closely, ask questions, notice patterns and pay attention to what happens in your body as well as the story you’re telling me.
We begin with what is happening in your life now. We might talk about the past when it helps us understand what is happening in the present, but you don’t have to give me your whole history or go digging through childhood before we can begin.
Sometimes I might ask you to slow something down and notice what just happened. We might get curious about a protective part, question whether something you’ve been telling yourself is actually true for you now, or notice that your body seems to be saying something different from your words.
Sometimes we’ll sit with something. Sometimes we’ll laugh.
You can disagree with me, tell me I’ve got it wrong, change your mind, say no or decide you don’t want to go somewhere. There isn’t a right way to do therapy with me. Your no matters here.
And this isn’t work I want you to become dependent on. Over time, I want the questions, curiosity, choices and ways of caring for yourself that we practise together to become increasingly yours.
Why this kind of therapy?
I don’t think people are a collection of separate problems to be fixed one by one.
What happens in your body, relationships, thoughts, emotions, history, health and sense of self all belong to the same person. They influence each other, and I’m interested in the whole picture rather than deciding that one part of you is the problem.
I also don’t assume that understanding something automatically means you can change it. You can know exactly why you react the way you do and still find yourself doing it. You can understand a boundary perfectly and still struggle to hold it when it matters. You can know you’re safe and still feel your whole body bracing.
That gap between knowing and being able to live differently is a lot of where my work happens.
So we might work with thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, protective parts, relationships, patterns or what is happening between us in the room. I draw on different approaches depending on what is useful, rather than asking you to fit yourself into one method.
The aim isn’t to make you permanently calm or remove every difficult feeling. It is to help you build enough capacity, choice and trust in yourself that you can meet what happens without losing yourself in it.
A little about me
I’ve been working with counselling clients for 15 years, and I’m still just as curious about people as I was when I began.
I haven’t arrived at this way of working through training alone. I’ve had my own therapy, done a lot of personal work, and lived through periods of poor health and chronic pain that made it impossible for me to keep thinking about the mind and body as separate things.
Along the way I’ve had to learn many of the things I now help clients practise: listening to my body, taking my own needs seriously, setting boundaries, recognising what belongs to me and what doesn’t, and learning to trust myself.
None of that makes me an expert on you. If anything, it has made me more respectful of how individual this work is. I can bring everything I know, but you’re the one living your life and you get the final say on what fits.
I love learning, and I tend to follow the threads. Over the years that has taken me through person-centred counselling, trauma, attachment, nervous system work, parts work, embodiment and plenty of things around the edges too. There’s a much more detailed list below if you’re someone who likes to know exactly what sits behind the work.
Alongside my one-to-one practice, I’m also developing The Anchoring; a wider home for the
same philosophy and the things I’ve seen prove useful over and over again: building capacity, self-trust and ways of caring for yourself that increasingly become your own.
My Experience and Training
My training has grown alongside my practice. I began with person-centred counselling and have continued following the areas that helped me understand more of what I was seeing in the people I worked with: trauma, attachment, nervous system responses, somatic work, parts work and the relationship between emotional and physical wellbeing.
Over the years I’ve worked with people from very different backgrounds, cultures and circumstances, bringing all sorts of reasons for coming to therapy. That breadth is a big part of how I work now; I’m interested in the person in front of me rather than fitting them into a particular type of client.
I don’t expect you to know which of these approaches you need. That’s my job. I draw on them flexibly depending on what is actually happening.
Qualifications
Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling (Dip Couns)
BA Corporate Communications
Approaches that inform my work
Person-centred counselling
Internal Family Systems (IFS) / parts work
Polyvagal theory
Somatic Experiencing-informed practice
Hakomi
Focusing
Embodied relational mindfulness
Sensorimotor-informed approaches
Somatic attachment and developmental trauma approaches
Embodied and movement-based approaches
Specialist training
Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy Certificate - The Embody Lab
Healing Trauma - Peter Levine
Polyvagal Theory and Pathways - Deb Dana
Somatic Interventions for Chronic Pain and Syndromes - Peter Levine
Somatic Strategies to Address Shock and Developmental Trauma - Peter Levine
Movement for Trauma - Jane Clapp
Trauma Release Experience - David Berceli
The IFS Clinician’s Guide - Frank Anderson and Diane Poole-Heller
Professional skills training
Clinical assessment
Safeguarding
Suicide awareness and prevention
Working therapeutically with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse
Understanding and supporting people who self-harm
Adverse Childhood Experiences and the impact of trauma on development
Working therapeutically with trans and non-binary people
Wider areas of study
Alongside my professional training, I’ve also explored complementary approaches to health and wellbeing, including functional medicine and nutrition, Ayurveda, breathwork, mindfulness and meditation.
Professional Membership
I am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and practise in accordance with their ethical framework and I am a member of Counselling in France.
I also undertake regular professional supervision as part of my commitment to ethical practice and ongoing professional development.
.png)