EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
about me
Professional Background
I am an accredited EMDR therapist (UK and Europe) and a certified Sensorimotor Psychotherapist, using body‑ and somatically oriented approaches in my practice. I have integrated EMDR into my therapeutic work since 2013 and have practised Sensorimotor Psychotherapy since 2021. I am currently undertaking further training in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), an approach that supports children and young people experiencing relational difficulties often linked to early trauma, loss, or disrupted attachment. DDP focuses on fostering safety, trust, and emotional connection between the child and caregiver, and integrates well with both EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.
My core professional training is in Social Work, and I remain a registered social worker, having obtained my BA in Finland in 1999 and my MA at UEA, UK, in 2002. I am also a qualified Practice Educator. Before moving into full‑time private practice, I worked as a Senior Clinician in fostering, regional adoption, and specialist young people’s services. I also worked as a Psychological Therapist in the NHS Staff Post‑COVID Trauma Service, supporting staff experiencing trauma, complex trauma, and emotional difficulties. Earlier in my career, I was a Senior Mental Health Practitioner at the National Deaf Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service and spent more than 14 years working as a Child and Young Person’s Therapist and Mental Health Practitioner within local CAMHS.
I specialise in trauma, particularly complex developmental and relational trauma, and in associated mental health difficulties including PTSD and C‑PTSD, in children and adults of all sexes. EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy are especially well suited to addressing trauma‑related dissociation and chronic pain. My developing DDP practice is further enhancing my ability to support parents of children of any age who are experiencing challenges linked to their own past trauma and attachment difficulties, and I will continue to apply these skills across adoption and fostering services.
Therapies
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR therapy is an evidence-based approach that can be used with children, young people and adults experiencing a wide range of mental health and emotional difficulties. Unlike many traditional talking and behavioural therapies, EMDR does not always require you to talk in details about every aspect of a difficult experience. Instead, it uses eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation to help the brain process distressing experiences, memories or feeling states (parts) that may feel 'stuck' and continue to affect how you feel, think or respond in the present. Many people choose EMDR alongside other therapies as a different, more experimental way of working with emotional difficulties. It can be helpful for difficulties such as trauma related intrusions, flashbacks, anxiety, OCD, addictions, prolonged grief and depression.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP)
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is a form of body-oriented psychotherapy, also known as somatic psychotherapy, which is a therapeutic modality for trauma, nervous system dysregulation, chronic body based, and attachment issues. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy welcomes the body as an integral source of information which can guide resourcing and the accessing and processing of challenging, traumatic, and developmental experience. It is a holistic approach that includes somatic, emotional, and cognitive processing and integration.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy enables clients to discover and change habitual physical and psychological patterns that impede optimal functioning and well-being. It is helpful in working with dysregulated activation and other effects of trauma, as well as the limiting belief systems of developmental issues.
Chronic/Persistent Pain
For clients living with chronic or persistent pain, particularly where a doctor or specialist has suggested that psychological factors may be involved, I offer an integrative approach combining Mark Grant’s EMDR protocol for chronic pain with Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Grant’s protocol is grounded in the understanding that persistent pain can become “wired” alongside strong emotional states from the time it began or intensified - fear, helplessness, anger, or grief that never fully processed can keep the nervous system in a heightened state, amplifying and maintaining the pain signal long after any original reason for the pain has healed. Using EMDR’s bilateral stimulation, we work to process these underlying emotional and memory networks, which can reduce the intensity and grip of the pain itself. Alongside this, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (suitable for both adults and children) brings a body-based lens to the work, helping clients track sensation, tension, and protective patterns as they arise moment to moment. Together, we explore what may be keeping pain alive in the body’s implicit memory even once the original cause has resolved: bracing patterns, unfinished defensive responses, or associations between certain movements, situations, or emotions and the pain experience. This combined approach supports the nervous system in learning that safety is possible again. Find Relief from Trauma and Chronic Pain | Overcoming Pain
Therapeutic Parenting
Therapeutic Parenting is a conscious, intentional approach to parenting that goes beyond typical discipline or guidance. It's especially beneficial for children who have experienced trauma alongside individual therapy such as EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.
Children who have experienced early relational trauma, particularly where this has resulted in insecure and disorganised attachment, often present with intense dysregulation that does not respond well to conventional behaviour management approaches (time out, reward based strategies). This is because such presentations are frequently rooted not in wilful behaviour, but in a nervous system organised around early experiences of threat and unpredictability within caregiving relationships. Effective intervention therefore requires a therapeutic parenting framework, informed by an understanding of attachment, the autonomic nervous system and its role in driving observable behaviour. Drawing on Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) principles, I support parents and carers in developing an attunement-based, PACE-informed approach (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, and Empathy) that fosters felt safety and co-regulation, laying the relational foundation from which change becomes possible. Alongside this parenting work, EMDR therapy provides a structured means of processing the specific relational and developmental experiences underlying these presentations, including the dissociative or fragmented states in which children may appear disconnected from their usual sense of self, safety, or relationship to caregivers. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy complements this work by attending directly to the body’s implicit patterns of early relational experience, helping children build awareness of physical sensation, posture, and movement as a route to regulating states that are often held below the level of conscious, verbal recall. Integrating DDP-informed therapeutic parenting with EMDR and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy allows for a comprehensive approach to treating the fear- and shame-based states that so often underlie the emotional and behavioural difficulties seen in children, with early relational difficulties which include those with neurodevelopmental difficulties, supporting both regulation and the development of secure attachment over time.
The Story Stem Assessment Profile, along with story stems adapted for adolescents, offers a valuable window into a child or young person’s internal working models of attachment, revealing the relational narratives and expectations they carry (often outside conscious awareness) and being replayed in daily life; this understanding allows intervention to be carefully tailored to address the specific patterns identified, ensuring that therapeutic and parenting approaches are targeted to each child’s unique relational history.
EMDR for Children and Young People
Helping children and teenagers feel safer, calmer and more able to move forward
Children and young people can be deeply affected by experiences that are difficult, frightening or overwhelming. Sometimes they may struggle to talk about what has happened, or may not even understand why they are feeling or behaving differently.
EMDR can be a gentle and effective way of helping children and adolescents process difficult experiences without requiring them to describe everything in detail.
I offer EMDR for children and young people who may be experiencing the effects of trauma, loss, difficult relationships, anxiety, emotional overwhelm, frightening memories, low self-esteem, or experiences that continue to affect them in everyday life.
My approach is particularly informed by my extensive experience of working with children and adolescents within CAMHS, fostering, and specialist mental health services. I have worked with young people affected by complex developmental trauma, disrupted attachment, loss and difficult early experiences, and understand that each child needs therapy to be adapted to their individual developmental stage, personality and circumstances.
Therapy that works with the whole child
With children and teenagers, EMDR is not simply about processing a particular memory. It is about creating enough safety and stability for the young person to understand and regulate what is happening inside them.
Depending on their age and needs, therapy may include talking, play approaches, movement, sensory awareness, therapeutic stories and other age-appropriate ways of working. I also draw on Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, which helps children notice and understand how difficult experiences can affect the body, emotions and nervous system.
For teenagers
Adolescence can be a particularly challenging time to carry unresolved trauma or overwhelming emotions. Young people may experience anxiety, anger, withdrawal, difficulties with relationships, problems at school, intrusive memories, shame or a feeling that they are somehow “different” from their peers.
EMDR can help adolescents make sense of experiences that continue to affect them and develop a greater sense of safety, control and self-understanding.
I work collaboratively with young people, respecting their growing independence while ensuring that parents or carers are appropriately involved. My aim is to create a space where a young person feels listened to, understood and never judged.
You don’t have to know exactly what is wrong
Parents often come to therapy because they can see that something has changed in their child but are unsure what is behind it. Perhaps your child is more anxious, angry, withdrawn or distressed than before. Perhaps something happened that you know has affected them, or there may be a longer history of difficult or disrupted relationships.
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is a brief self-applied stress reduction technique using elements of cognitive therapy, with physical stimulation of acupuncture points. It is often referred to as ‘Tapping’ as it uses a two finger tapping process on known acupuncture points.
EFT can address a range of issues by simply focusing on the issue you would like to address with an acceptance statement, along with a simple two finger tapping technique.
Effectiveness has been established for phobias, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, pain and more.
Professional Training and Supervision
I am registered with Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), Cambridge as an Independent Practice Educator and student supervisor. I continue to offer professional supervision and training in the fields of attachment, trauma, and social work.
I am trained in the Foundations for Attachment programme developed by Dr Kim Golding, a six‑session, in‑person intervention designed to support adoptive parents, foster carers, special guardians, and professionals in building positive, attuned relationships with children who have experienced trauma, loss, or separation.
I am trained to deliver the 'Freedom Programme', which is a course designed to help people understand, and recover from the effects of intimate partner and domestic abuse. It also provides valuable material for professionals supporting survivors.
Fees
I offer prospective clients a free 10–20 minute telephone call, with no obligation, to explore whether my approach is the right fit for you
I charge £90 per therapeutic hour, offered either in person in central Ely, Cambridgeshire, or online via Teams. For longer EMDR processing sessions, a 90‑minute appointment (£135) is often most effective.
For dyadic or family sessions, a 90‑minute format (£135) is also recommended to allow enough time for meaningful work.