Therapy

Sarah’s Approach to Therapy

Sarah believe’s therapy is collaborative with clients. When a warm and supportive environment is created, person-centred, trauma-informed, holistic therapy can occur. By exploring emotional and cognitive blocks a client may have, she supports clients to make meaningful change and improve functioning in daily life. She facilitates clients acknowledging the impact of trauma, mental health, and addiction on their lives, strengthening resilience, self-compassion, and hope.

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“It’s important to remember that the overarching goal of protective parts is to keep the hurt away. Protective parts will go to any length to distract, derail, confuse, and avoid moving toward the pain”

— Frank G. Anderson (Internal Family Systems founder)

Therapy can support you in finding healthier ways to manage issues relating to:

Anxiety/Panic

Autism

Aging

Addiction

ADHD

ComplexPTSD/PTSD

Depression

Dissociation

Self Esteem

Panic Attacks

Abuse/Abandonment

Sexuality/Identity

Trauma

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Modalities

Sarah integrates the theories, skills and techniques of evidence based therapeutic approaches to offer the most relevant treatment to her clients.

Click on the modality to learn more about how these work and their benefits:

An insightful approach to psychotherapy that helps individuals understand and heal their inner emotional world. Through exploring the parts of themselves carrying emotion, memories and worldviews, clients can foster acceptance and attune and heal to those parts holding pain. This can benefit clients impacted by trauma and addiction.
Psychodynamic Therapy explores how our early relationships, attachments and past experiences shape our current behaviours and relationships. This process helps address inner conflicts and unresolved issues, paving the way for the development of healthier coping mechanisms and more fulfilling relationships. By addressing underlying causes rather than just symptoms, it fosters lasting and meaningful changes, moving beyond temporary symptom relief.
Practical ways of learning the practice of distress tolerance, emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness. These skills allow individuals to respond more and react less to challenges in their life.
Relieving emotional distress by learning to focus on the present moment rather than ruminating past events or worrying about the future.
Somatic practices become new habits that keep individuals present and offers perspective, making challenges feel more manageable.
Somatic Experiencing is a powerful body-oriented approach to healing symptoms of trauma and stress disorders, recognising that trauma is not just stored in the mind, but also in the body. Interventions release trapped energy, tension and stress in our bodies, enhancing self-regulation and emotional resilience. This is particularly helpful for managing PTSD, complex trauma, anxiety, panic disorders, chronic pain and stress-related physical symptoms.
Identifying and changing the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviour which are negatively impacting the individual.
Supporting clients develop self-compassion to reduce anxiety, depression, anger, stress, rumination, and a sense of hopelessness.
Learning to understand and accept difficult life events and accept the unacceptable. ACT works to change the resulting self-defeating behaviour.

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Fees

Boarding School Syndrome

Boarding School Syndrome is complex, lasting trauma that may result from attending boarding school from a young age. It involves emotional detachment, interpersonal and relationship difficulties, attachment issues, and fear of abandonment, resulting from the loss of a primary caregiver, parent and family system. Unhelpful coping strategies and patterns may continue from this time impacting how individuals interact with others and themselves post-school as adults. The early adaption required to survive this structure can create a masked identity and lead to a disconnect from ones authentic self. This masking can lead to difficulty with emotional vulnerability and connection with others due to the protection this distancing offered. Workaholism, perfectionism, guilt, shame, addiction, depression, anxiety, emotional numbness, a need to control, a drive to overachieve, and an inability to switch off, may appear due to the psychological distress experienced.

Individuals may have learnt to adapt in these ways:

Be independent and not reliant on others from a young age, impacting their sense of trust in the world.
Push away or minimise emotions to appear capable and strong.
Develop a larger/smaller personality - feeling out of alignment with how they view themselves.
Difficulty establishing and keeping close relationships.

Through long term psychotherapy, the hidden trauma of early separation can be explored, emotions felt, and unhelpful coping mechanisms highlighted. Clients can then begin to rebuild a stronger sense of self.