Things people actually want to know

Most people I work with are highly self-aware. They've read the books, done some therapy, and can describe their patterns in real detail. And they're still stuck.

That's not a failure of insight. It's where insight runs out.

Understanding happens in the thinking brain. But the patterns we're talking about live somewhere else entirely, in the parts of the nervous system that were shaped long before we had words for any of it. You can know you're safe and still have your body react as if you aren't. That's not irrationality. It's just the wrong tool for the job.

Cognitive approaches hit a ceiling because the pattern was never a thought to begin with. It was a survival response. It got wired in through experience, and it changes through experience too, not through understanding it better.

That's what this work does differently. We slow down enough to work with what's actually happening in the body, the sensations, the impulses, the places that brace or go quiet. And over time, with enough of those experiences, something genuinely shifts.

It tends to feel less like an insight and more like something settling that hadn't been able to.

Honestly, it depends. But there are some patterns I can share.

Most people notice something shifting within the first three to five sessions. Not a resolution, but a real change. A bit more space around a reaction that used to be instant. The body feeling slightly less braced. That early shift tends to matter a lot in terms of trust and momentum.

For deeper work, especially with complex trauma or patterns that have been present for a long time, six months to a year of regular sessions is a more realistic horizon. That's not a criticism of the approach. It's just an honest reflection of how long some of these patterns have been held, and how much new experience is needed to genuinely shift the baseline.

This isn't indefinite therapy. I work with people to stay oriented to what we're actually working toward, and to notice when the work is genuinely done.

A few things that tend to affect the pace:

• How long the pattern has been present
• Whether there's ongoing stress making it harder to settle
• Where your nervous system is currently in terms of capacity
• Whether we're working with a single event or something more layered and developmental

If you want a more honest read on what it might look like for you specifically, that's exactly what the initial consultation is for.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-based approach to healing trauma and chronic stress, developed by Dr Peter Levine. It draws on neuroscience, biology, and observations from the animal world about how living creatures move through threat and return to safety.

The central idea is that trauma isn't really about the event. It's about what happens in the body when an experience is too overwhelming to process. The nervous system braces, freezes, or collapses. That incomplete response gets stored. And it keeps running in the background long after the original situation has passed.

Talk therapy works with meaning and narrative. That's valuable and I use it too. But SE goes somewhere talk can't easily reach: the sensations, impulses, and involuntary responses that are running before any thought forms.

In a session, rather than reviewing what happened, we track what's happening now. We work slowly, with close attention to physical experience, building capacity incrementally rather than pushing through. It's not cathartic or dramatic. Most clients describe it as quiet and precise, and the change as gradual and then suddenly obvious.

It tends to work well for:

• Complex or developmental trauma
• Chronic anxiety and hypervigilance
• Feeling numb, flat, or cut off from yourself
• Stress that doesn't shift with rest or thinking your way through it
• The physical residue of difficult experiences

Internal Family Systems (IFS) was developed by Dr Richard Schwartz. The core idea is that the mind is naturally multiple. We all carry different internal parts, and each of them has a history, a perspective, and a reason for doing what it does.

You probably know this from experience. Part of you wants to set a boundary; another part can't bring itself to. Part of you is ready to move on; another part keeps circling back. These aren't contradictions or signs that something is wrong with you. They're parts, and they each developed in response to something real.

IFS works by building a relationship with these parts rather than trying to override or manage them. Instead of fighting the anxiety or the people-pleasing or the shutdown, we get curious about what it's protecting. What happened that made it feel like it needed to work this hard? What would it do differently if it trusted it didn't have to?

The model is built around what Schwartz calls Self, a grounded, curious, compassionate presence inside you that most people can access once the protective parts feel safe enough to step back. Healing happens through that relationship, not through me as the therapist doing something to you.

In my practice I work with IFS and Somatic Experiencing together. Parts often live in the body, in a tightening in the chest, a contraction in the belly, an urge to disappear. Tracking those sensations while working with what the part needs tends to move things at a level that sticks.

Both approaches work with trauma at a level below purely verbal therapy, and both have solid evidence behind them. They share more than they differ. But the differences are worth knowing.

How EMDR works

EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, typically side-to-side eye movements, tapping, or audio tones, while you hold a specific traumatic memory in mind. The process seems to help the brain reprocess the memory so it loses its emotional charge. It was originally developed for single-incident trauma and has since been adapted more broadly.

How Somatic Experiencing works

SE doesn't start with a memory. It starts with the body and what's happening right now in terms of sensation and physiological state. Rather than targeting a specific memory to reprocess, SE works to help the nervous system complete responses that got stuck, and to gradually build more capacity to regulate.

In practice

EMDR tends to be more structured, working toward a specific target. SE is more exploratory, following what's present in the body moment to moment.

Some people find EMDR activating in a way that's hard to manage, particularly those with complex or developmental trauma, or whose systems don't yet have enough settled capacity to process intense material. SE is often a better starting point in those cases. The two can also complement each other well.

I'm trained in SE. If EMDR sounds more like what you're looking for, I'm happy to talk through that in an initial consultation and refer you to someone who specialises in it if that's the right fit.

Yes. And there's a specific reason why.

By the time most leaders arrive at burnout, they've already pushed through exhaustion many times over. What's happened isn't just depletion. The nervous system has been running in sustained activation, high alert, high output, scanning for threat, for so long that it's lost its ability to come down. It no longer reads rest as safe. Sleep doesn't restore. Holidays don't help. The system stays braced even when there's nothing left to brace against.

That's a physiological state. It doesn't resolve through better planning, stronger boundaries, or reframing your relationship to work, though those things can matter too. It resolves through working directly with the physiology. Through helping the nervous system learn, through repeated experience, that it's safe to regulate down.

That's what SE does. We work with what's actually happening in the body rather than reasoning our way around it. Slowly, incrementally, the system starts to find its way back to a resting state it may not have occupied in years.

For executives and leaders, something else often surfaces in this work too. Most high performers have built their capacity on top of unresolved stress. As regulation improves, thinking tends to sharpen, presence in the room changes, and decisions start coming from somewhere more settled. That's not a side effect. It's what regulation actually makes possible.

Regulation isn't a wellbeing topic. It's a leadership capacity.