There is no ‘right or wrong’ way to heal, but with trauma-informed practice healing is possible.

About Me

My experience in the mental health field extends back almost 20 years and I have a keen interest in trauma work, including complex trauma. I have experience in working with sexual assault and abuse, family violence, anger and aggression, grief and loss, anxiety, depression, stress, interpersonal issues, workplace stress and trauma, relational issues stemming from developmental and attachment traumas, plus much more.

I approach therapy from a compassion-based, person-centred position and have a keen interest in the Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Structural Dissociation models of trauma recovery. I believe we are all multifaceted and we protect ourselves in the most amazing ways when we are confronted with stress and life-threatening events, and we don’t even know we are doing it! The neuroscience behind the ‘why’ we act in certain ways, especially long after the traumatic/stressful event has passed, can help us to understand our internal world better and start to heal the fractured relationships we have ‘inside’ ourselves. We all have ‘parts’ of ourselves, parts that developed to help us through tricky times, but these protective or survival responses may continue pop up in triggered moments (that we may not even be aware of) and start to impact on our lives and relationships.

Therapy can assist you to become the therapist for yourself – I hope to be able to help you to start to look inwards and heal the fractured relationships within and find gratitude for all the parts of you that have supported you throughout your life. Life events and situations bring us to therapy when these protectors are activated and maybe causing fractures in our external relationships – family, friends, partners, colleagues, and communities. Therapy will help you to find out more about you in these moments, and help you to nourish your mind, body and heart.

My interest in somatic based work, (working with the body, brain and nervous system), can also help us understand more about the ‘why’ in how we respond long after the trauma has passed. Sometimes, the body can be the source of the trauma, and this can be overwhelming to connect with. It can lead us down the path of pain which becomes too emotionally and physically charged (can’t calm or relax), or we feel so numb there is absolutely nothing inside of us, an emptiness. Both of these experiences can be unsettling and scary at times. Building the relationship with one’s own body can be daunting, but this can be achieved through co-regulation, education and collaboration in the therapeutic space. Paced and tailored to your needs, not the therapist’s.

As a part of my ethics and values in the work, I commit myself to ongoing clinical and peer supervision and updating myself in the field of trauma recovery as we learn more and more about the amazing things we do to survive, and then also thrive in life.