What I work with
On this page you will find more about what I work with most often. I have particular experience and interest in working with grief, loss and bereavement, patterns in relationships, loneliness, low self-esteem (including inner voice/thoughts), anger, fertility issues, and trauma.
My ongoing trainings, and experience with courageous clients over the years have helped me understand more about how our minds and bodies connect. Integrating research from neuroscience and the workings of our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) with our life experiences and attachment patterns offers insight into understanding and regulating our emotions, how we think, feel and behave.
Underlying all this is the quality of the relationship we have to our self: the way we talk to ourselves inside, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. These stories affect how we understand our histories, what we believe we can hope for in life, and what our relationships and future ‘should’ look like.
Grief, loss & bereavement
We know that grief follows a bereavement, however we can experience grief in different ways following all kinds of loss, including miscarriage, estrangement (chosen or not), and after change, such as a move, or the ending of a job or relationship. It might also be the loss of experience, as regret for what has not been possible.
Grief and loss can alter our sense of identity, and challenge our beliefs about what the world is like. It can affect our relationships and sense of who we are in the world, meaning that we feel misunderstood even when there are people around us. If we feel as though other people don’t ‘get’ us or don’t understand what we are going through, we can’t see our experience reflected back. There can be a profound loneliness to feeling unseen by others at the same time as not recognising ourselves.
Living after loss requires us to navigate a radically altered landscape, and it takes time to find our way.
Grief may follow the death of someone very close, such as a family member, partner or friend, in which case we understand the pain of that loss as related to how much we love them. But if the relationship with the person who has died was difficult, or if there has been estrangement, there can be additional complexity. We can feel grief and loss for what we didn’t have, and what wasn’t possible for us. It can feel like we have run out of time and chances for it to be different.
When a death has been sudden, violent, or through accident or suicide, there may be symptoms of trauma that need to be alleviated, as well as the grief.
Grief is hard and needs time. But living through grief can become even more difficult when we have additional feelings about the way we are experiencing these emotions. This is often about the idea we are doing it ‘wrong’ in some way. Here are just a few common examples:
the idea that we are taking ‘too long’ to feel better or be able to function
the sense of failure about not being able to manage, practically, financially, emotionally
feeling less entitled to grief compared to someone who was closer to the person who died
feeling like we ‘should’ be more upset than we are
feeling we are showing, or not showing, distress in the ‘right’ way
finding it difficult to contain emotions or behaviour around others
feeling angry with the person who has died
feeling regret over some aspect of the relationship with the person who has died
feelings of guilt about our inability to be present to people or our other responsibilities
wishing it had happened to someone else
that the beliefs or rituals of our particular religion or community are not recognised, or if they are, that we feel unable to take comfort from them
Other factors may complicate grief, for example when the loss is something we feel unable to share, such as a miscarriage. There is increasing recognition of the huge impact that pregnancy loss can have, physically and emotionally, however it might be that friends, family, employers and colleagues didn’t know about the pregnancy. The pain of the loss is then increased by its lack of acknowledgement, making it a very lonely type of loss.
Grief sometimes needs a return of our attention at different stages of life, where we find ourselves moving into a different life stage or decade, relationship, or location without the person who has died.
Part of us might desperately need relief from the pain, yet another part may feel that this disrespects the importance of the person who has died, whom we don’t want to leave behind. This may create tension between remembering and honouring the person or loss, and reconnecting to ourselves.
Patterns in relationship, with ourselves and others
Have you ever reached a point in a relationship, or had a relationship end, and thought: ‘It’s happened again!’ ? This can be particularly frustrating when we sense a familiar situation unfolding, yet remain confused about how we got here. We feel powerless to do it differently. These dynamics may be showing up with romantic partners, family members or colleagues at work.
Our life experiences, and in particular our early attachment relationships (with parents, carers or authority figures), affect the way we feel around other people, and influence our behaviour patterns as lovers, friends, parents, family members and colleagues. For example:
becoming overwhelmed by intense emotions in certain situations
finding it difficult to identify and communicate feelings
scrabbling to appease and keep others happy
becoming ‘cold’ and cutting people off if they get too close
finding it difficult to trust people, or feeling the urge to test them
wanting lots of reassurance, feeling embarrassed about this need
putting everyone’s wishes above our own, then feeling the rage of own unmet needs
The causes of this are not our fault, but we are left with shame, confusion and low self-esteem as the symptoms play out in our lives.
Loneliness, difficulties in finding connection
Anyone can experience periods of loneliness. Lonely times can be due to a change in circumstances, such as a move, or being at a different ‘life stage’ to peers. It is often related to a loss of some kind, a bereavement, a job loss, the breakdown of a relationship with a partner, friend or family member.
Loneliness is a subjective experience, as individuals we have differing needs for social connection. Loneliness is different from being alone; many people are content in their alone time. One of the loneliest experiences of all can be in a relationship with someone who isn’t right for us, or a friendship group or family situation where we feel we don’t fit and cannot be our full selves.
The persistent, ongoing loneliness of longing for more social contact than we have is a uniquely painful experience, of feeling unnoticed as the world moves on. It can be very hard to emerge from this state, because the human nervous system responds to loneliness as a ‘threat’, and from this position it is harder to trust other people, or imagine that things could be different. The lonely person may find themself retreating from social contact, which is a cruel irony given that safe connection with others is what they are craving.
Trauma
Sometimes we are struggling due to the legacy of trauma, and/or childhood neglect. Trauma may be from a single event, or several specific incidents, or experiences in relationship. This can show up in present life in a variety of ways including (but not limited to) :
intrusive thoughts or images
intense or ‘triggered’ emotions and stress response such as anxiety and anger
physical responses such as panic, stomach upset, sweating, shaking
difficulties in forming or maintaining fulfilling relationships with other people
low self-esteem, poor self-image and shame
Someone living with trauma will have survived and managed in the best way that felt available to them. Some of these coping strategies will be helpful, but some may also be harmful, such as using food, alcohol or other substances and self-harm.
