Therapy & Coaching

Helping you move forwards from precisely where you are.

I offer Person-Centred therapy guided by the body’s ‘felt sense’ intelligence.

The ‘felt sense’ allows us to access a universal quality of being which always accompanies us but is quiet compared to our usual thought patterns and activities so we don’t notice it. We experience the ‘felt sense’ when we are in flow, when we are unselfconsciously doing what we love, often out in nature or with people we trust. When we experience overwhelm, anxiety or depression the usual flow of our lives has been interrupted and we get stuck. Whatever the scale of our challenge we can use a pause to reconnect with our ‘felt sense’. We are social, relational creatures and when we do this in the company of a trusted person who keeps us company we find we are able to listen in to our ‘felt sense’ to our bodies experience. All of our thoughts, feelings and activities are stored by our body, even things we cannot remember and so are the possibilities of change. Together we will work with what arises in a safe, kindly, welcoming way, paced by your sense of what is best so that whatever has happened can be met from our most connected, loving self. Together we can do so much more than we can alone.

While it is usual in therapy to experience discomfort at times, you will be safely accompanied through this journey.

I’m offering

Individual ‘Relational, Focusing-Oriented’ Therapy for…

• Anxiety, Stress, Depression, Trauma.
• Facing unwanted change, illness or loss. 
• Feeling stuck or overwhelmed in any part of your life. 
• Individual support for relational and family difficulties.

Coaching – Feeling stuck?

Personal development and coaching for;

• Professional relationships and work difficulties 
• Wanting more creativity or freedom in your life, work or art.
• Coaching for people who work with children
• Coaching for people who are having or avoiding difficult conversations 
• Support for your beginning, completing and spreading your work
• Some company as you explore your own journey and/or projects – doing what you want to do with joy!

Is this suitable for me?

This therapy is suitable for anyone, particularly people looking for an effective, personal, warm, safe way of working. While the details of your unique situation and preferences lead our work the most important factor in deciding if this is for you is if you feel interested in working in this way. Send a message or give me a call and to see if you think work is suitable. 

Why work with the felt sense?

Much of our story happened to us as children too early to remember, when we were very young and preverbal, working with language and logic will never get us the whole way.

In our sessions, there is no need to retell stories you feel uncomfortable with, whether they are simply private, you have told them before and do not wish to retell them, or if it is a taboo.

Each thought and feeling we have is stored in the body and accessible there. Working with felt sensations allows us to process these thoughts and feelings without reliving them makeing disassociation less likely, more manageable and therefore retraumatisation less of a problem.

The work we do with the body will have immediate effects on helping you manage symptoms of trauma. Change happens when we use the body, not simply retelling the same stuck difficulty.

Indigenous/Non-western traditions see the mind/body/spirit as interconnected and linked, in this work we assume that to be true.

Working closely with you to achieve the change you want.

At the heart of the therapy I offer is Carl Roger’s Person Centred Therapeutic way of being. I will listen to you and reflect back what seem to be the most important words, feelings and images, you will be encouraged to help me ‘reflect back’ more exactly your experience. Together we will work to understand what it is at the edge of your experience which is connected to your difficulties.

We will work together to uncover what lies just out of sight and hold it at the right distance so all of it is less overwhelming. In Person Centred Therapy it is understood that the client is the expert, no-one knows you as well as you know yourself, my role is that of a guide, helper, assistant, a midwife to your process. The relationship we build is the healing ingredient, as often in the past relationships have been the source of difficulties. In the therapeutic relationship we can work to understand each other as completely as possible, just as we seek to understand the parts of ourselves and how our experiences fit together.

As a Focusing Oriented Therapist I use my own ‘felt sense’ and will help you to use yours to reflect not just on your feelings but how your body experiences your feelings, maybe your anxiety is accompanied by  a twist in your stomach, your depression with a heaviness around the shoulders, grief with a pain in the heart, your lack of ease with a wobbly feeling in the background. The bodies ‘felt sense’ provides us with an avenue which takes us beyond the familiar stories which go round and round our heads and to a new fluid place, ever changing and full of surprise.

Additionally neurobiology and polyvagal theory demonstrates why our relationship to our body and felt sense is often so useful, we can use our body to experience trauma, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Complex PTSD, learn to ground ourselves out of flight/fright/fawn/freeze, understand PTSD as Post Traumatic Stress Response and understand our triggers and in doing so uncover new patterns of behaviour. Once we know that our bodily response of anxiety, withdrawal, depression, addiction and so on are the result of our best efforts to help ourselves, however misguided, we can offer ourselves compassion, transforming the way we relate to the ongoing repercussions of traumatic experiences and historical legacy of systemic trauma, without ever excusing them.

For me individual therapeutic processes spill beyond the two people in a room as I believe we are all connected. Our work spills into our activity, the room can open up into the environment, spirituality and our connection to each other and the universal consciousness is always present, this can be described by the terms Ecotherapy,

Transpersonal therapy, Buddhist Psychology, Indigenous and Ancestral work and many more as these experiences defy terms and boundaries. There is no need to have (or indeed not have) any spiritual or religious belief to do this work, but many people who believe they can change have some also believe in processes larger than any isolated individual and these things can be, but do not have to be part of the therapeutic process. There is in my work an invitation to use body, nature, non-human persons and supportive ancestors for finding safe connection, building resilience and growing strength.

About my work

The active agent in therapy to heal is ‘relationship’, a safe place to understand yourself. There are many names for this but the key ingredients I offer are;

• empathy
• congruence
• authenticity
• compassion
• safety
• warmth
• resonant reflection (mirroring back what you say to check I understand you well)
• following your pace and perception of the world 
• presence
• commitment that you have the capacity to heal even if you don’t (and especially when) you don’t have that yourself
• collaboration

We can draw on;

In our sessions, you’re invitation to grapple with

• peace & nonviolence
• search for justice
• effect of war, poverty & environmental and losses
• intergenerational trauma
• spiritual loss, emptiness, isolation, existential angst
• your spirituality and relation to land and history of ancestors
• structural racism, gender and sexuality oppression, effects of patriarchy and colonialisation
• Buddhist psychology, Ecopsychology and Tikanga and Philosophy
• Individual ‘relational, focusing-oriented’ Therapy for…
• Anxiety, Stress, Depression, Trauma.
• Facing unwanted change, illness or loss. 
• Feeling stuck or overwhelmed in any part of your life. 
• Wanting more creativity or freedom in your life, work or art. 
• Support for relational and family difficulties.
• Anything else you wish to discuss

No pressure, ever.