EMDR Therapist for Complex Trauma & Complex PTSD

EMDR can feel scary, especially if you’ve read about trauma processing and are worried that therapy will mean moving straight into the most painful memories.

But EMDR doesn’t begin there. We start by getting to know what’s brought you to therapy, what you’re struggling with now and what helps you feel grounded and safe. We’ll spend time on preparation and resourcing, building ways to help you settle your nervous system, feel more anchored in the present and cope with whatever comes up before we begin processing anything difficult.

Only when there’s enough safety and stability do we begin identifying the memories or experiences we might work with. Processing then happens gradually, with regular check-ins and space to pause, slow down or stop if we need to. Afterwards, we make sure you feel settled again, and in later sessions we check back in with what has shifted and what might still need attention.

Although I’m trained in traditional EMDR, I also use attachment-focused EMDR, particularly where there’s developmental trauma, attachment disruption or difficult early relationships. A big part of that work is the relationship between us. We build trust and safety first, and then step into the processing together when it feels right.

Depending on what you need, EMDR might also sit alongside parts work, somatic work, inner-child work or more traditional talking therapy.

Complex trauma is often less about one single event and more about what happens when difficult experiences carry on over time. You may have grown up in a home where there was emotional neglect, instability, abuse, chronic stress, inconsistent care, or where your needs were repeatedly overlooked.

The ways you learned to survive those situations can follow you into adulthood. You might notice yourself people-pleasing, overthinking, constantly scanning for what might go wrong or struggling to trust other people. You may shut down, become overwhelmed very quickly, or feel ashamed of reactions that seem to come from nowhere.

The way I approach therapy is not by asking, “What’s wrong with you?” but by asking, “What happened to you?” That means looking at your reactions in the context of what you’ve lived through, and making sense of them without reducing you to a diagnosis or treating you as though you are the problem.

The relationships we grow up with shape a lot of what we come to expect from other people. If your relationships with your parents or caregivers were unpredictable, inconsistent or frightening, that can continue to shape the way relationships feel as you get older.

Romantic relationships, friendships, relationships with siblings or parents, and even becoming a parent yourself can all bring old patterns back to the surface. We often imagine we should get better at relationships with age, but adult relationships can actually feel more complicated because there is more at stake, more history, and more opportunity for those old expectations to be stirred up again.

You may crave connection and still find yourself pulling away from it. You might expect rejection, struggle to trust, feel uncomfortable receiving care or love, or notice yourself constantly checking whether someone is upset or angry with you.

You may already know your attachment style. But knowing the label doesn’t always change how it feels when someone gets close, pulls away or lets you down.

We can look together at what you learned about love, safety, closeness and your own worth, and gently begin to make sense of what gets stirred up in relationships now.

Many neurodivergent adults have spent years being misunderstood, masking, pushing through overwhelm, and trying to fit into environments that didn’t work for them or were actively damaging to them. You may also have experienced trauma that has nothing to do with being neurodivergent. Both can be true, and both deserve space in therapy.

I work with autistic, ADHD and other neurodivergent adults, and I adapt trauma therapy around the way you actually process memories, thoughts and feelings. That might mean slowing the pace so there’s more time to notice what’s happening rather than feeling rushed through it, or asking questions in a clearer or less abstract way. It might also mean giving you longer to process before expecting an answer, adapting parts of EMDR that feel cognitively demanding, or taking sensory needs into account.

For me, neurodivergent-affirming trauma therapy means looking at what happened to you through the lens of how your brain works, rather than expecting you to adapt yourself to models of therapy that weren’t always built with neurodivergent brains and nervous systems in mind.

Sometimes your body reacts before you’ve had time to make sense of what’s happening. You might freeze, go numb, feel foggy or disconnected, tense up, or suddenly feel the urge to run away or withdraw.

Often, this is your nervous system doing what it learned to do to protect you. The difficulty is that it can keep reacting to the present as though something from the past is happening again.

I draw on Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and somatic-informed approaches to help us work with what’s happening in your body and nervous system, not just what you’re thinking about it. That might mean noticing your own signals of stress and safety, gently building awareness of internal sensations, and helping your system recognise the difference between then and now.

For neurodivergent clients, this can also include working with differences in interoception and sensory processing, without assuming there’s one “right” way to notice what’s happening inside you.

For some people, there comes a point where you think, “This ends with me.”

You may already be a parent and feel determined not to pass on the things you grew up with. You might hope to have children in the future and want to do some of this work first. Or you may be child-free and still feel strongly that certain patterns, beliefs or ways of relating do not need to continue through you.

That can be a powerful decision, but it can also feel quite lonely. You may find yourself questioning what was normal in your family, grieving what you did not have, or trying to work out what you want to do differently without having had a clear model for it yourself.

We can look at the patterns you have inherited, what still gets activated in you now, and what it might mean to break the cycle in a way that feels compassionate rather than pressured. The aim is not to become a perfect parent, future parent or person. It is to give you more choice about what you carry forward and what you leave behind.

Fertility struggles, pregnancy loss and reproductive trauma can be incredibly isolating, especially when so much of what you’re going through is happening behind the scenes.

You may be dealing with infertility, fertility treatment, miscarriage, recurrent loss, stillbirth, pregnancy after loss or the aftermath of a difficult medical experience. There can be grief, but also fear, anger, uncertainty, changes in how you feel about your body, and a sense that your life has been put on hold while everyone else seems to be moving forward.

These experiences do not always fit neatly into the idea of bereavement. Sometimes there is trauma as well as loss, particularly where there has been repeated treatment, medical intervention, uncertainty or a frightening birth or pregnancy experience.

Pregnancy after loss can bring its own complexity. You may want to feel hopeful, while another part of you is bracing for something to go wrong. Therapy can give you somewhere to hold both.

I have specialist training in this area and support people with fertility trauma, reproductive trauma, pregnancy loss, infertility, fertility treatment and pregnancy after loss. My aim is to offer a space where the full emotional and physical impact of these experiences can be understood, rather than reduced to “just grief.”