I am a psychotherapist, writer and teacher who specialises in helping people heal from childhood trauma. I’m an Internal Family Systems Therapist and an Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and I combine schema therapy, as well as internal family systems with a range of other powerful models into my integrative approach to healing trauma. I am a long-term meditator and student of Buddhism, so I also weave in ideas from Buddhist psychology, because this 2,500-year-old tradition offers such rich, wise insights into what causes suffering and how to relieve it.
At the heart of my approach are two parts-based models. Schema therapy offers powerful insights into child development, core emotional needs and schemas – neural networks in the brain holding habitual ways of thinking, feeling and responding to stressful triggers. Healing these painful schemas involves creating a kinder, more compassionate story about who you are and why you are struggling with psychological problems.
Internal family systems is a trauma-informed approach that takes a deeply compassionate, non-pathologising view of psychological distress. If you are suffering right now, it’s helpful to understand that there is a part of you feeling stressed, anxious or depressed, not all of you. This small shift can be transformative, because it also suggests there is another you – an older, wiser, Compassionate Self – who can connect with, comfort and heal the part who is struggling.
As a trauma therapist, I have helped hundreds of people recover from painful childhoods, which have caused problems in adulthood like chronic stress, debilitating worry and anxiety, recurrent episodes of depression, substance abuse and other addictive processes, eating disorders, mind-body symptoms, relationship and parenting difficulties or more severe and life-limiting problems such as dissociative disorders.
Although I specialise in helping people with the impact of childhood trauma, I work with a wide range of psychological problems. My practice is online, so I work with clients and supervisees all over the world via Zoom.