Hey There

I’m Claire, a Clinical Psychologist. I’m passionate about helping people to understand how their experiences in life have shaped their emotional responses, coping behaviours and self-critical parts.

Who do I work with?

 I work with adults over the age of 18 who feel blocked from their hopes and dreams.  You do not need a diagnosis to work with me because I focus on whatever is most important to you now.

I believe that each human is a mini eco-system that needs nurturing from the inside and out, but the system becomes unbalanced by negative things that have happened to you.  

These experiences can over-stimulate your nervous system, causing you to:

1. Feel overwhelmed by negative emotions

2. Repeat behaviours that feel familiar but out of sync with your goals, and

3. Have dominating inner-critics. 

This is essentially trauma, my area of speciality.

Why am I qualified to help you?

I qualified as a psychologist in 2008 and have qualifications in evidence-based therapies.  I have worked both in the NHS and in independent practice, and specialised in a sexual assault service in London.

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I’m accredited in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Eye-Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing (EMDR), plus I have training in Mindfulness, Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) Skills and Internal Family Systems (IFS).  I use these in an integrative way depending on the background and needs of my clients.

My secret-sauce is in choosing which tools and skills you need from this array of complex and powerful psychological models and parcelling them up so they are easy to digest and integrate into your life. 

My therapy style:

In therapy, I always teach about the human brain and how it reacts to stress in quite a detailed way, as clients feedback how helpful and enlightening this is. 

We then develop an awareness of your patterns and current life situations that might be exacerbating things.  

I believe that the thoughts and behaviours that are now holding you back will have kept you safe at some point in your life.  Knowing that it’s not your fault, and that your stuckness makes sense is always a relief and forms our road map for therapy. 

We then focus on rebuilding your sense of safety, trust and resilience, guiding you to use psychological tools to calm your nervous system and respond with compassion and confidence to your inner-critics.  We may need to process traumas (this means make sense of and update stuck memories) or try out new ways of coping, but we only move to this when you are ready and I am along side you the whole time so you never feel rushed or unable to move forward.