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Sometimes life moves fast and feels overwhelming - especially when we’re under pressure, feeling low, or carrying something difficult. 

Therapy offers a quiet space to slow down and listen to what’s really going on inside. Together, we’ll explore your thoughts, feelings and body-based signals with care and curiosity  at your own pace and in your own way. This gentle approach is suitable for anxiety, stress, burnout, low mood, and emotional overwhelm as well as trauma and addictions.

During our sessions, you’ll be introduced to an inner listening method called focusing - a gentle, body-based technique that helps you stay with your emotions in a way that feels safe and manageable. This is very much a learnable skill, and something we practise together, so you can begin to use it in your everyday life. When emotions are approached in this way - even painful or overwhelming ones - they often begin to shift, allowing you to move from confusion or distress towards something calmer and  clearer. 

Let me share a little more about my approach so that you can decide if I am the person to share your journey. 

I am Amy. I've been working as a psychotherapeutic counsellor for more than ten years now - first, as a bereavement support worker, then with agencies such as Anxiety UK and Mind, and now, as a private therapist.

In a session, you can expect an opportunity to slow down and contemplate the things that trouble or intrigue you without being judged, advised or pushed. You hold the answers and, together, we will work towards finding them. I think of therapeutic work as a journey back towards yourself.

Along the way, we may use some of these approaches:

Focusing: This is a gentle - but very effective - way of exploring your inner knowing by getting in touch with, and more accepting of, your feelings as you experience them. As a British Focusing Association Recognised focusing practitioner, I will be able to support you in learning this nourishing tool for self-care.

Relational therapy: Petruska Clarkson's integrative psychotherapeutic framework, in which I trained, sets out five different kinds of relationship that exist between client and therapist. In our work together, we may move between these different ways of relating.

Polyvagal theory: These tools and exercises help you to become more familiar with the messages your nervous system is giving you and learning to understand your world and your responses through the lens of your bodily responses to them.

SandStory: In this gentle creative approach you reflect on your inner journey using a tray of sand and figures.

Clay work: this is a form of active psychotherapy in which you use clay as a means to look at feelings and emotions. I am a trainee on this Play Therapy UK approved course and am particularly drawn to the existential and Jungian dimensions of this therapeutic process.

Walk and talk: Nature is the best healer. If you would rather be out walking than sat in a room, then we can take the counselling sessions into the woods.

Self-compassion: I hold the heartfelt belief that self-kindness is the key to deep change. Compassion Focused Therapy can help you to develop this attitude towards yourself. 

To arrange a session, please give me a call on 07970 561836 or e-mail amymccormackcounselling@gmail.com.