Psychological Services
The therapeutic and consulting services I offer aim to help you move forward in your life with confidence, clarity, resilience and mental wellness.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing)
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing.
It is a form of psychological therapy that involves you, the client, following a light or dot across your field of vision, usually from side to side - which we call bilateral stimulation. Other forms of bilateral stimulation are used to increase the efficacy of EMDR including auditory (I will ask you to wear headphones and you will hear a beep in each ear in turn) and tactile sensations (tapping your shoulders or knees with your hands, or holding buzzers).
Whilst you are paying attention to the bilateral stimulation (BLS), I will ask you to access in your minds eye images or memories that we have pre-agreed you would like to work on. We will spend a lot of time discussing what these memories or images are (we call them ‘Targets’), and we will explore them in some depth before the processing phase of EMDR begins. Target memories are typically of past events that were traumatic in some way. They have become associated with strong negative thoughts and feelings that are impacting the rest of your life, and what you believe about yourself and who you are. You may feel stuck and unable to move forwards. EMDR works by helping you to access the memory network associated with these traumatic target images. It enables you to make connections and process these events in a way that reduces how aversive the memory is, and also brings new meaning and understanding, which in turn helps you to heal from the past.
EMDR is most commonly used to treat PTSD, C-PTSD and traumatic stress related disorders and problems. In these circumstances, it is (and trauma-focused cognitive therapies) are the gold standard of treatment, recommended by the NICE Guidelines and WHO as the treatment of choice.
Since it’s emergence as an effective psychological therapy for PTSD over three decades ago, there has been a wealth of clinical research into the use of EMDR to treat other mental health problems, including for anxiety disorders, complex grief, attachment-based trauma, and depression.
Counselling & Talking therapy
When we first think of therapy, the chances are it is probably counselling or talking therapies that spring to mind. Like all psychological therapies, counselling aims to provide a containing, safe and confidential space for you to be able to work on the problems you are facing with a professionally trained therapist. However, unlike more directive, disorder-specific interventions, counselling and talking therapies focus on a person-centred, client-led approach where you and the therapist reflect on the issues arising in your life and explore these together in more depth, with an aim of gaining a deeper understanding of your problems and also of yourself. Through this, it becomes possible to see things differently. Your perspective will widen, shift, or come into sharp focus.
As a Counselling Psychologist, I truly believe in the power of counselling and talking therapies to transform people’s lives. Over the course of therapy, I often see clients let go of perspectives, people, jobs, feelings and patterns of behaviour that are no longer serving them, or else heal from past experiences, loss, and grief that are causing them considerable pain. As an observer, it seems to me that the most powerful part of counselling is that it is a space that is just for you, for you to fill, try things out, be challenged, question yourself - for you to work out how you really feel about things, and why. This knowledge breeds the power to move forwards, with self-compassion, purpose and intentionality.
Psychotherapy
Similar to counselling and other talking therapies, psychotherapy involves creating a containing space for the you to explore the problems you are facing, offering a supportive and safe environment for self-discovery. However, in most cases, psychotherapy is a longer term intervention, allowing for the time that is required for deeper-seated difficulties to be unpacked. A strong therapeutic alliance that is built on trust, empathy and clear boundaries is important in psychotherapy, as the client ventures to share and work through things that they may well have held onto or kept boxed away for much of their life.
As a therapist practicing psychodynamic psychotherapy, my role as a therapist is to facilitate the creation of a non-judgemental, empathic environment where the client can grow in their self-awareness. Often this involves clients gradually becoming more consciously aware things that have influenced how they have felt, acted, and moulded who they are in the world, without them necessarily making links back to past experiences.
We have all probably been in situations where we are trying to do something differently to the way it was done to us, or the way we have done it before, but somehow, we still end up stuck repeating old patterns. In psychotherapeutic terms, this is called ‘repetition compulsion’. The same explosive arguments, the same emotional shutdown, the same habit of being drawn to toxic and unhealthy romantic attachments. Psychotherapy can be a helpful way of looking beyond the current behavioural pattern, back to the roots and origins of the problem. It usually begins with our early-attachment figures and the relationships we had with our caregivers. These so often shape and mould who we felt we were allowed to, or could, be - to ourselves and to others.