Emotional Support and Personal Change
You might be feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or not quite like yourself. Perhaps things feel harder than they used to or you’re noticing things you can’t seem to shift. Whatever has brought you here, there is space to understand what’s going on and begin to move forward.
I take a tailored, individual approach to the work we do together. No two people are the same and so the way we work is shaped around you, your experiences, your needs and what feels manageable. I draw on a range of approaches, including EMDR, Somatic Therapy and Cognitive Hypnotherapy, often integrating elements of each within our work. Rather than following a fixed method, the process develops naturally, guided by what will be most supportive for you at each stage. If you have a preference for a particular approach, you’re welcome to let me know. Below is more information on each therapy I offer.
Here are some examples of what I can help with:
Anxiety
Low mood or depression
Stress and overwhelm
Self-esteem and confidence
Life transitions
Feeling stuck or lost
Patterns in relationships
More detail on each therapy
Cognitive Hypnotherapy
Cognitive Hypnotherapy focuses on the unconscious processes that shape how you think, feel and respond. While the conscious mind is responsible for awareness, decision-making and logic, the unconscious mind is where patterns, habits, and automatic responses are stored and run from. This is why insight alone doesn’t always lead to change. By working with the unconscious mind, we can access and update the patterns that are running automatically, allowing change to happen at a deeper level. This makes the process more effective and often more lasting as we’re working with the way your mind naturally functions rather than trying to override it.
EMDR
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is a gentle but effective therapy that helps people process and heal from difficult or distressing experiences. EMDR is widely used for trauma and PTSD but it can also be helpful for anxiety, phobias, low self-esteem and other emotional difficulties where past experiences continue to have a present-day impact.
EMDR works by helping the brain reprocess memories so they can be stored in a way that is no longer distressing. One of the ways this is achieved is through gentle, back-and-forth eye movements as you follow my fingers with your eyes while we work through what has been troubling you. This back-and-forth eye movement appears to activate a process similar to what happens during REM sleep, when the brain naturally processes experiences and information from the day.
A helpful way of understanding this is through the following idea:
“The brain uses a similar process to digestion in order to process experiences. Just like digestion extracts nutrients from the food we eat, the mind’s information processing system, when functioning properly, extracts useful information from our experiences.”
By activating the minds information processing system, we can extract useful information from our issue, allow our mind to make sense of it and remove any emotional discharge so the memory can be stored in the brain differently. In turn this allows our thoughts, emotions and behaviour to naturally change, as they arise from the brain.
Although the exact science continues to be explored, EMDR is well researched and recommended by organisations such as the World Health Organization and NICE for the treatment of trauma. EMDR was originally developed in the late 1980s while working with people who had experienced severe trauma, including war veterans, and has continued to be researched and developed ever since.
Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy recognises the close connection between the mind and the body. Our experiences especially stressful or overwhelming ones, are not only held in our thoughts and emotions but can also be held in the nervous system and body.
In Somatic Therapy we pay attention not only to what you are thinking or feeling, but also to posture, breathing, physical sensations, and the body’s natural responses. This is because communication of our emotions is also expressed through the body in these ways, without us necessarily realising. By noticing bodily sensations and responses, we can begin to understand what may be held in the body and we can then reprocess these emotions in a way that is effective for the nervous system to truly recognise safety. This is important as our nervous system understands safety through bodily sensation rather than through language, this is very different to our logical mind. By processing these bodily sensations, we are directly addressing the nervous system.
By gently supporting the body’s natural ability to regulate and recover, Somatic Therapy can help people process and recover from trauma, help with anxiety, stress and emotional overwhelm.
If you’re thinking about starting or if you have any questions, you’re welcome to get in touch or request a call. You don’t need to have everything figured out before reaching out.
Greta Trentin
Nervous System–Led Change for Lasting Transformation | Trauma Informed
07776436548
gretatrentin.therapy@gmail.com
