what to expect

We are all about finding what works for you, and will personalise how we work so that it meets your goals. That means each client will have a different experience, but here are some of our particular areas of expertise. We get to the heart of the issue in the first session, so expect more therapeutic content from the start. We'll spend a few minutes on housekeeping and introducing ourselves, and taking a short general overview of who you are. We'll then ask you about your goals and what brought you to come and talk to us. After that, we aim to get to some therapeutic tools and techniques - but it's also ok if you just want to get things off your chest to someone who isn't going to judge you.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy that focuses on improving our psychological flexibility by becoming more aware of our unhelpful patterns of thoughts, emotions and feelings, and developing the skills to be in the moment in our lives and to act in a way that moves us in the direction of what's important to us and who we want to be. 

It's a powerful technique that sees your therapist working in partnership with you, and developing real skills in your first session. I've often seen life-changing results for people in that first session. 

I love ACT because it works with almost all of the issues people bring to the room. I also find it comfortable because it doesn't assume that I'm the expert telling you how to live your life and control your mindYou will also find that my approach is very tailored to your individual life, rather than built on a 'one-size-fits-all' off-the-shelf template


Hypnotherapy

I started using hypnotherapy because I found I had a natural talent for it. I was originally quite sceptical until I saw the results it brings for people. In essence, hypnotherapy is fancy language for getting you into a deep state of relaxation which can provide relief from day-to-day stress, and enable us to work with some of your sub-conscious habits. I use it to support some of the ACT work, as it helps to reinforce the conscious behaviour changes we work on through ACT. It's great for sleep, anxiety, and as a precursor to some of the trauma work. (And it's not about making you cluck like a chicken)

REWIND PTSD therapy

REWIND therapy for PTSD is one of the most exciting developments in my practice. Very few therapists outside the UK offer this technique. It builds on hypnotherapy, and (in essence) works by me inducing a deep relaxation state and then coaching you through watching yourself watching a video of your trauma, then being drawn into that video and experiencing it backwards at high speed. The goal of the treatment is to rid you of intrusive memories (flashbacks and dreams) and give you control of the memory by filing it into our normal memory system, with you holding the key to remembering it if you choose to. 

The relaxation and use of guided imagery provide a degree of dissociation, so it won't feel like you're reliving the experience. One of the great things about this is that you don't need to tell me any of the detail of the trauma. I've had clients use this to work through traumas they couldn't tell me about until after we'd done the technique. 

People describe the experience as 'being like a dream' or 'seeing something happen to someone who looked like me'. They describe the results as instant relaxation, or a sensation that 'the trauma happened, but it also didn't happen'. 


Yarning

Yarning is part of who I am. It's more than just talking - although it sometimes seems like just two people talking, we will be talking through our stories to share knowledge and provide examples. In a therapeutic sense, I'll be looking for the strong parts of your story and highlighting them, or helping you to rewrite your story in a more positive and helpful way. Some might call that Narrative Therapy

Blended therapy - online tools

Online tools provide an effective support to in-person sessions. We recommend This Way Up which is a very useful set of 18 programs that provide Cognitive Behavioural Therapy around specific issues. Their programs are free if you're seeing us, and can give you a slightly different approach than I would, without being contradictory. They're also a good way to keep working on things between sessions (and save you a few bucks too)