Many of us grow up with the idea that anxious feelings are negative and to be avoided at all costs. But what if struggling with our thoughts and feelings actually makes us feel worse? I use Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), somatic awareness and compassion-based processes to help people live beyond their anxiety and OCD. I have over a decade of experience in private practice, during which I have developed a powerful, effective approach to anxiety and OCD that is rooted in research and continues to evolve as our knowledge of these conditions increases.
My approach is not diagnostic and doesn’t use medical language. Instead I will work with you to understand your problems in the context of your life experiences, as well as offering practical interventions that you can start using straight away. Together we will focus on your values, and find pathways towards a rich and meaningful life.
As well as extensive professional experience, my work is informed by my personal experiences with anxiety and OCD. Exploring the story of my OCD and anxiety allowed me to change my perspective in ways I never thought possible, and I want to do the same for others, especially those for whom traditional forms of treatment like CBT have fallen short. Check out my blog page for more information about my approach, as well as a range of free resources to try out.
Sessions can be 50 minutes or 1 hour long depending on your preference. I don’t ask people to book block sessions, but your appointment slot is yours for as long as you need. We check in regularly to review progress and make sure our work together is headed in the right direction. I work with people either weekly or fortnightly, over zoom or on the phone.
Ways I work with anxiety
Avoidance is part of the problem
Don’t think of a bear
Don’t feel the seat
Get to know your anxiety
Knowledge is power. Get to know your anxiety so that it can’t surprise you. Decrease threat levels by noticing, naming and opening up to anxiety.
Identify and move towards your values
Connect with what is important to you. Values can act as a rope, to pull us through difficult thoughts, feelings and sensations, an inner compass we can use to guide us.
Ways I work with OCD
OCD is not your enemy
I work with OCD not as a disease but as a coping strategy that we developed at some point in our lives, to help us to deal with threat or uncertainty.
Explore the roots of your OCD
Research has highlighted the benefits of exploring the roots of OCD – insight, clarity and helps us to make sense about. Also just talking about it takes it out of the shadows.
Explore your core beliefs
Our OCD does have messages for us, just not the ones we think. Underneath the content of our sometimes bizarre obsessions are fears linked to core beliefs we hold about ourselves. Often these beliefs are that we are not good enough, or that we are bad or mad. Sometimes our greatest fear is that we do not know ourselves.
Explore perception
People with OCD can lack certainty about what feels real, and what reality means. People who are stuck in an OCD ‘loop’ will often describe a sense of unreality, or an altered space. Helping people to accept their own unique way of experiencing the world decreases the need for OCD obsessions and rituals.
Care for your nervous system
Having OCD can feel traumatising. We can end up stuck in fight/flight, waiting for the next threat.
Build exposure practices based on willingness and values
In ACT, exposure practices do not seek to eliminate anxiety, but rather to help us accommodate it as we move towards our values.