’Secure attachment raises our mental level and supports our functioning at the highest level’
Van Der Hart, Nijenhuis and Steele (2006)

About

About My Work

I offer counselling to individuals and couples and am an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), registration number 00815695.

As a queer woman, my own life experience includes navigating the challenges of growing up feeling different and highly sensitive within environments that were not always supportive. This has shaped my interest in how people adapt in order to cope with difficult circumstances.

Many of the strategies we develop early in life are actually creative ways of surviving situations where we had little control. These adaptations can be helpful when we are young, but later in life they can sometimes leave us feeling disconnected or stuck.

People I work with often describe experiences such as:

• Feeling emotionally numb or cut off

• Difficulty forming close relationships unless they feel very safe or familiar

• Staying in work or situations that don’t feel right in order to survive or fit in

• Loneliness or a sense of being separate from others

• Feeling as though other people are more capable or “more adult”

• A sense that life is happening somewhere else, or will begin later

• Feeling behind where you “should” be in life

• Believing in others more easily than believing in yourself

• Losing touch with your interests or sense of identity

Experiencing some of these feelings does not mean something is wrong with you. Often they are signs that earlier emotional needs were not fully met or recognised. Therapy can help make sense of these experiences and begin to reconnect you with parts of yourself that may have been pushed aside.

I also have a particular interest in how trauma and cumulative life experiences can shape our internal world. Trauma is not always a single dramatic event; sometimes it develops through repeated moments of misattunement or feeling unseen. Over time this can lead people to prioritise safety, avoid risk in relationships, strive for perfection, or expend significant energy trying to appear “fine”.

For LGBTQ+ people, these patterns can be intensified by minority stress and the pressure to adapt to social expectations. I’m interested in how these experiences shape identity and how reconnecting with others in supportive spaces can be healing.

Areas I Work With

I support clients with a range of issues including:

• Loss and bereavement

• LGBTQ+ related experiences

• Long-term health conditions

• Relationship endings

• Trauma and complex trauma (CPTSD)

• Depression and persistent sadness
  
  I also support people who are recovering from difficult or painful relationships and want to rebuild their confidence, develop healthier boundaries, and move towards a life that feels more secure and fulfilling.

  Experiences in relationships can shape how we see ourselves and many people find themselves in an ever decreasing circle of familiar relationship patterns that can cause exhaustion over time. For example, early in a relationship, you might find yourself naturally falling into one of two roles. The pursuer (the one who advances, seeks closeness, initiates connection, and pushes for dates) or the withdrawer (the more distancing, or less active role, depending on many different factors.

  Later on, often in the middle or longer phases of the relationship these roles can suddenly flip. The person who once pursued may start retreating and pulling away, while the one who used to withdraw now becomes the pursuer.

  At first glance, this reversal seems illogical or even contradictory to our rational minds. Yet it makes perfect sense to your deeper attachment system which is doing what it evolved to do, (seek closeness or distance).

  Understanding this can reduce self-blame and open the door to breaking the pattern through awareness, vulnerability, and individual or couples work like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) which looks at negative interaction patterns like this.
  
  EFT couple and individual work can offer a space to slow down, understand these patterns, and reconnect with the other, or yourself depending whether you’d like individual or couple therapy.

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  

Contact

I work online only currently

If you are interested in finding out more about counselling, please feel free to drop me an email or book a chat