Working as a trauma-informed integrative psychotherapist with a person-centred approach allows me to understand the complex impact of trauma on individuals' lives and helps create a safe therapeutic environment where clients can feel heard and validated. By integrating trauma-informed principles, I can offer individualised support that acknowledges and addresses the unique needs of clients while also facilitating a sense of empowerment in the healing process, creating a clear path to recovery.
It is a somatic-based, trauma-informed method that emphasizes the connection between the mind and body. Rather than focusing on what happened, the process utilizes curiosity and compassion to help a person recognize the emotional states and physical sensations stored in the body. By observing and understanding these unconscious patterns, we can gain insight, make more conscious choices, and liberate ourselves from self-generated suffering.
• Presence and curiosity: The client is offered a safe space and, with compassion and empathy, is guided towards their inner wisdom.
• Somatic awareness: This process brings awareness to the body, attuning to physical sensations, such as tension, tightness, or a change in breath. These physical manifestations can reveal suppressed emotions and implicit memories tied to past trauma.
• Unveiling hidden beliefs: Exploring the body's sensations and emotional responses in a safe relational space, will uncover the limiting and often unconscious beliefs that develop in childhood as a way to cope with painful circumstances.
• Reconnection and liberation: As the unconscious beliefs and emotions are revealed and held with compassion, we can reconnect with our authentic selves. This recognition allows us to let go of the stories that have unconsciously guided our lives, creating space for new possibilities and freedom. From surviving to thriving.
Polyvagal theory provides an understanding of how our nervous system is wired for social connection and survival; and how it can be influenced by our environment and experiences. The vagus nerve is a major component of the autonomic nervous system, playing a crucial role in regulating heart rate, breathing, and other bodily functions. No matter how your ns has been impacted by trauma we can re-shape it towards resilience and flexibility. We don't have to be stuck in survival mode.
Polyvagal theory has implications for understanding how we regulate our emotions and respond to stress; the role of social connection and communication in promoting safety and well-being; and how trauma can disrupt the autonomic nervous system and lead to negative responses. The theory suggests that the autonomic nervous system is organised into three main branches, each with a distinct function:
• Ventral Vagal Complex (VVC): Associated with social engagement, calm states, and feelings of safety.
• Sympathetic Nervous System: Responds to perceived threats with fight-or-flight responses, increasing heart rate and breathing, and mobilising the body for action.
• Dorsal Vagal Complex (DVC): Associated with immobilisation and shutdown responses during extreme danger.
Neuroception: We are constantly scanning our environment for cues of safety or danger through neuroception.
Autonomic Response: Based on the assessment of safety, our autonomic nervous system shifts between the different branches (VVC, SNS, DVC), leading to different physiological and behavioural responses.
Social Connection: The theory highlights the importance of social connection and co-regulation in promoting feelings of safety and well-being.
The Trauma-Informed Stabilisation Treatment model is a trauma-informed parts model that integrates principles and techniques drawn from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, clinical hypnosis, and cognitive restructuring methods. It offers a clear, practical, and neurobiologically grounded path to healing. By re-framing extreme behaviours and inner fragmentation as protective responses to trauma, it combats shame and self-loathing, and it changes the client’s relationship to the symptoms.
TIST is designed to work with clients who have experienced prolonged trauma, especially in early life. These clients often suffer from emotional flooding, shame, dissociation, and extreme inner conflict. Many are caught in cycles of suicidality, addiction, or self-harm. TIST helps clients recognise their symptoms as adaptive responses to trauma held by fragmented parts—and teaches them to relate to those parts with compassion, rather than fear or shame.
Somatic trauma therapy is a type of intervention that encourages you to work through traumatic experiences and chronic stress by focusing on the physical body. Using movement and guided exercises, individuals are taught to recognise how stress and trauma are stored in the body, how the mind and body are connected, and methods to use specific exercises to release the emotional pain stored within the body.
We focus on this mind-body connection to help you identify and release stored traumatic memories "stuck" within the physical body. They help create a sense of safety and comfort and teach you how to become more deeply acquainted with the physical expression of trauma to release stored emotional pain.
With trauma-focused therapies, it's important to pull from inner feelings of comfort and strength to form a sense of being OK as the hard work happens. Resourcing is the process of developing a sense of safety. It promotes competence and self-reliance in finding balance and stability during disruptions in healthy self-regulation, while you experience the discomfort of emotional pain as it's expressed in the body.
Titration describes a process of moving cautiously, introducing discomfort slowly and in small amounts to build tolerance and resilience. It’s meant to ensure a person is not re-traumatised or re-triggered during the treatment process. You’ll learn how to manage the discomfort at increased levels without becoming distressed. This process takes time and practice.
Pendulation in somatic therapies encourages moving back and forth between discomfort and regulation. You learn to safely navigate this distance. The goal in somatic therapy is to help you become tuned in to your body and build increasing tolerance toward the discomfort related to traumatic experiences. Pendulation allows you to recognise when balance needs to be restored and how to do so.
IFS is based on the understanding that we all have different “parts” within us – inner voices, reactions, or roles that sometimes feel at odds. You might notice this when you say things like, “Part of me wants to move forward, but another part is holding back,” or “There’s a side of me that always criticises everything I do.” IFS helps us explore these parts with curiosity and compassion, rather than judgment.
Some parts of us are protective, some carry pain, and others want to be heard. IFS helps you build a relationship with these parts from your deeper Self – the calm, compassionate inner presence that's always there, even if it's been obscured by life's struggles. No matter how fragmented and disconnected our internal system is we can bring harmony and integration to it.
• Make sense of inner conflict or reactivity
• Heal wounded or overwhelmed parts of yourself
• Soften the inner critic and develop greater self-compassion
• Reconnect with a felt sense of clarity, balance, and wholeness
IFS is a gentle yet powerful approach, especially helpful for depression, anxiety, trauma, addiction, eating disorders, relationship issues, or just generally feeling emotionally stuck or disconnected from life.
EMDR helps you to recover from traumatic events. The therapy aims to reprocess traumatic memories, reducing their emotional impact and allowing you to move forward. EMDR has been scientifically shown to be an effective therapy for PTSD, trauma and related mental health conditions.
• Targeting Traumatic Memories:
EMDR focuses on memories of distressing events that continue to affect a person's mental health.
• Bilateral Stimulation:
During therapy, you engage in bilateral stimulation, such as side-to-side eye movements, while focusing on the traumatic memory.
• Reprocessing:
This process helps the brain reprocess the memory, making it less distressing and allowing it to be stored more adaptively.
• Reduced Emotional Impact:
EMDR aims to desensitise the emotional impact of the memory, so you can think about the event without experiencing the same level of distress
Attachment theory focuses on relationships and bonds (particularly long-term) between people, including between a parent and child and between romantic partners. It is a psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and relationships between people. This theory suggests that people are born with a need to forge bonds with caregivers. These early bonds set the foundation for later relationships and continue to influence attachments throughout life.
• Understanding early relationships:
Explore how your early relationships with primary caregivers (parents, foster parents, etc.) may have shaped your current attachment style and relationship patterns.
• Identifying attachment styles:
Help you recognise your attachment style (secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, or fearful-avoidant) and how it influences your interactions with others.
• Addressing relationship challenges:
Identify and address relationship issues stemming from your attachment style, such as difficulties with intimacy, communication, or emotional regulation.
• Promoting secure attachment:
Guide you in developing healthier, more secure attachment patterns through various therapeutic techniques.
EFT helps you address emotional and relationship issues by focusing on the underlying emotions driving negative patterns of interaction. It creates a safe space for exploring and understanding emotions, fostering healthier communication and connection. You will learn to identify, experience, and regulate your emotions, ultimately leading to more secure and fulfilling relationships and develop the skills to manage your emotions and interactions in healthier ways.
• Focus on emotions: Emotions are key to understanding relationship dynamics and personal experiences.
• Creating safety and connection: A therapeutic environment is created to make you feel comfortable expressing emotions and needs.
• Identifying negative cycles: You’ll learn to recognise patterns of interaction that lead to distress and conflict.
• Reframing problems: You’ll understand the underlying emotions and attachment needs driving negative behaviours and situations.
• Transforming emotional responses: We focus on changing reactive, negative emotions into more positive, compassionate, and connected ones.
• Promoting attachment security: By addressing unmet attachment needs, EFT helps you build stronger, more secure bonds.
CBT focuses on the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. It's a practical approach that helps you identify and change negative or unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaving, ultimately leading to improved emotional well-being. A key aspect of CBT is your active participation in the therapeutic process, practising the learned techniques and applying them to real life.
CBT helps you to identify specific problems and set achievable goals. Through a collaborative process, during sessions, you begin to recognise negative thought patterns, develop strategies to challenge them, and practice new, healthier ways of thinking and behaving.