How can I help you?

How Can I Help You?

Let’s talk a little about my views on my areas of interest:

Anxiety is an emotion humans live with daily, but sometimes this can become crippling. I elaborate a bit more about this in a blog post on this website. Do we pretend we don’t have anxiety and fight it, or do we accept it and work with it? So that it diminishes in power and becomes part of us rather than something we have to wrestle. We acknowledge there is no magic cure and that we need to learn to cope with it. Learning ways of coping with anxiety and unlearning unhealthy ways of coping is where therapy can be useful.

Therapy for Trauma can have almost miraculous results, thanks to amazing techniques such as EMDR (Please see the page on EMDR). Trauma that results in symptoms in daily life appears to not have been processed properly, and current thinking is that once this is adequately processed, the symptoms that are occurring in the present can be relieved. Remember trauma can be what we call big T trauma such as sexual assault or war or small ‘t’ trauma such as relationship trauma. There is no competition in how the brain stores disturbing and distressing events.

In terms of chronic illness and pain and the associated anxiety and depression that comes with these conditions, your pain and symptoms are valid and are not ‘all in your head’. You may be suffering from a chronic condition that does have a physical explanation, or there may not be an obvious reason found yet. This does not at all negate the cognitive connection to pain, however, and the fact that emotional trauma can have a role to play in pain and chronic illness. This is why EMDR often is helpful in processing past trauma and helping in the therapy journey of pain and chronic illness clients.

I have an understanding of your lived experience of chronic illness and pain because I too live with chronic pain, being a sufferer of Trigeminal Neuralgia since 2010. I get it, both professionally and personally.

My approach

Is informed largely by Person-Centred Therapy, ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), as well as by DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy), CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).
Is biopsychosocial and takes into consideration what is going on in each part of the client’s life, from body to mind and social circle.
In terms of chronic pain and illness, I cannot take the pain away but help a person accept and deal with their condition and find a way to have a meaningful life. Minimisation of pain and discomfort can definitely be felt.
Takes into consideration that a person’s body can become the source of psychological trauma and contribute to anxiety and depression, rather than the other way around (which is often what medical professionals believe – that anxiety and depression have caused the chronic condition, which does indeed happen but not exclusively).
Appreciates that medical interventions are a source of trauma, from injections to invasive surgery.
Works together with the client in that I develop a program or treatment plan for a number of sessions, to help the client understand the nature of their pain and managing it. This could include 60-minute sessions of psychotherapy, as well as 90-minute sessions of EMDR (please see my page describing EMDR for more information).O