What I want you to know about your counselling journey with me..

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This is me.. When I look back over my career, it still stops me in my tracks to think how one seemingly random decision altered the course of my life. For years, I was a hairdresser. Not because I chose it, it was chosen for me when I was still young and at school. The fear from parents and pressure from school about not "achieving anything" was real.....but I had other dreams. If life had gone to my teenage plan, I’d have been on stage, dancing backup for Janet Jackson or Fi

Take A Seat...Your Welcome here.. Welcome to my online space, a warm, inviting corner where I share insights, reflections, and tools designed to support your journey toward healing and self-awareness. As a professional Somatic Trauma Psychotherapist, I’m deeply committed to providing a space where we can explore the intricate dance between the mind and body. I write these blogs not only to reinforce the themes discussed in session but also to extend that conversation into you

Self‑abandonment isn’t about dramatic choices or “not loving yourself enough.” It’s a nervous‑system pattern where you disconnect from your own needs, feelings, or limits in order to stay safe, accepted, or avoid conflict. It’s common in people who grew up with unpredictability, criticism, emotional inconsistency, or environments where their needs weren’t recognised. Understanding self‑abandonment helps you notice when you’re leaving yourself behind and how to come back. What

Some emotional reactions don’t start in thoughts, they start in the body. Long before you had language, your nervous system was learning how the world works. This early learning is called preverbal emotional learning, and it explains why some adult reactions feel sudden, overwhelming, or “out of nowhere.” Understanding preverbal patterns helps people stop blaming themselves for responses that were shaped before they could speak. What Preverbal Learning Is Preverbal learning i

Many people try to think their way out of difficult feelings. We analyse, explain, reframe, plan. But some reactions don’t live in thoughts, they live in the body. A tight chest. A dropped stomach. An urge to shut down, disappear, lash out, or freeze. These reactions aren’t “wrong.” They’re your nervous system trying to keep you safe based on what it learned in the past. The problem is: what once protected you can keep you stuck now. Your body remembers old danger even when y

Many people arrive in therapy with a quiet, urgent pressure inside them, a sense that they need to hurry. They want to get better quickly, understand everything immediately, fix the pain, stop the patterns, “get over it,” or finally feel like themselves again. Many people also notice this rushing outside the therapy room. It can look like not being able to sit still, always needing to be productive, filling every moment, or moving through life at what feels like warp speed. Y

Suppression: The act of consciously or unconsciously stopping, holding back, or pushing down a feeling, thought, or impulse. Emotional suppression isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a nervous‑system strategy. A survival pattern. A way the body protects you when expression feels unsafe, overwhelming, or too costly. For many neurodivergent and trauma‑affected people, suppression becomes automatic, long before they even realise they’re doing it. Below is a clear breakdown of why su

When we share our neurodivergence with the people closest to us, it can feel incredibly vulnerable. These are the people whose opinions matter, whose reactions carry weight, and whose understanding we hope for. And yet, even with loved ones, sharing a diagnosis can stir up old fears, not because the diagnosis is frightening, but because of the history that came before it. Many people who identify as neurodivergent, whether through ADHD, autism, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, sensory

Labels, what do they mean? Why I’m On My Soapbox About This I’ve found myself on my soapbox more than usual lately, because the word disorder continues to shape how people are understood, dismissed, or overlooked in ways that no longer make sense. After years of working with trauma, neurodiversity, and nervous‑system patterns and after being personally told I couldn’t be autistic because I was “too professional” and “too social” I’ve seen how language creates stigma, fuels s

I get asked about this a lot, so I wanted to answer it openly. There’s a familiar idea that therapists are endlessly calm, endlessly wise, and somehow immune to the messiness of life. It’s an understandable assumption, you meet us in a quiet, contained space where the focus is entirely on you. You see our regulated presence, not the school‑run chaos, the forgotten lunch, or the moment we realise we’ve left our glasses on our head again while looking for them (yes, that’s me).

We learn how to love long before we ever enter a romantic relationship. We learn how to express anger, how to soothe ourselves, how to ask for help, how to tolerate disappointment, how to handle conflict, and how to trust, not from adulthood, but from the nervous systems we grew up around. Your caregivers were your first emotional environment, your first teachers, your first mirrors. And even if you don’t consciously remember the lessons, your body does. This isn’t about blam

Many people come to therapy confused by the repetition in their lives. They notice they keep choosing the same kind of partner, the same kind of friend, the same kind of workplace, or the same kind of dynamic, even when they know it hurts them. It can feel like déjà vu, like life keeps circling back to the same themes. This isn’t because you’re broken, self‑sabotaging, or making bad choices. It’s because unhealed wounds pull you toward what feels familiar, not what feels good

You try. You genuinely try. You use the tools, practise the skills, breathe, pause, reflect, communicate, regulate, and show up. You do the work. And still, things feel hard. Still, you feel overwhelmed, stuck, misunderstood, or like you’re “back at the beginning.” When this happens, it’s easy to assume you’re failing. But here’s the truth you may need to hear, sometimes the issue isn’t you, it’s the environment you’re in. Your nervous system cannot heal in environments that

Avoidance is one of the most human trauma responses there is. People often think they avoid the hard stuff because they’re weak, lazy, or “not trying hard enough,” but that’s never the truth. We avoid the hard stuff because our nervous system is doing its job, protecting us from what it believes will overwhelm, shame, or destabilise us. Hard conversations, difficult emotions, unmet needs, boundaries, grief, memories, and truths can all feel threatening when our system has lea

Why Emotional Intensity Isn’t Always Truth One of the most common experiences in trauma therapy is the moment a client says, “It feels true… so it must be true.” And I understand that deeply. When a feeling or thought arrives with intensity, shame, fear, rejection, abandonment, anger, guilt, it can feel like a fact. The body reacts as if the threat is real, the nervous system mobilises, and the mind fills in the story to match the sensation. But here’s the gentle, grounding t

“Be your authentic self” is a phrase we hear everywhere, but for many people, especially those with trauma histories or years of masking, it feels impossible. Real can be rare because many people move through the world in survival mode, masking, performing, pleasing, or protecting themselves. Authenticity requires nervous‑system safety, and not everyone has that. When you begin to show up as your real self, you may notice how unusual it feels in a world built on adaptation. B

As a somatic trauma psychotherapist, I often remind clients that the therapy hour is powerful, but it is only one hour. It is a protected space where the nervous system can settle, where patterns can be seen with compassion, and where the body can finally speak without interruption. But the real learning, the real integration, and the real change happen outside the therapy room. This is why psychoeducation is essential. It bridges the gap between what happens in the session a

“I don’t like myself” is one of the most quietly devastating sentences people carry. It rarely comes from nowhere. It comes from history, nervous‑system overwhelm, relational patterns, and environments that taught you to turn pain inward. In therapy, this phrase is almost never about who someone is. It’s about what they’ve had to survive. “I don’t like myself” is not a personality flaw. It’s a nervous‑system state. It’s an attachment wound. It’s a sign of overload, not inadeq