Trauma and abuse

I work with people who’ve experienced trauma, including childhood abuse or neglect, sexual abuse or domestic abuse. I also work with those who are feeling traumatised following a life-threatening illness or accident, and those suffering traumatic grief.

Trauma can have wide reaching effects - it can damage self-esteem and make you feel helpless and ashamed - even though you did nothing wrong. You might have very strong feelings, such as anger or grief, or be cut off and numb. Some people re-experience events through flashbacks or intrusive memories.

Therapy can help, because exploring what’s happened enables it to be processed and to become part of your history, rather than continuing to dominate the present. Therapy can make sense of how traumatic events have impacted you and the ways this shows up in current relationships, such as difficulties trusting others.

Psychodynamic therapy allows a flexible approach to talking about painful events, where you can share as much as you’re comfortable with, and take it at your pace. I am also trained in traumatic incident reduction, which involves looking at particular incident(s) in detail. We can explore which approach you feel would most benefit you.