Working with individuals online
A welcoming and confidential space to bring what you’re struggling with. Practical tools to manage difficult thoughts and feelings in the here and now, deeper work where needed, and over time, help to understand your own mind and make meaningful, lasting changes in your life.
The people I work with in therapy often arrive carrying a difficult emotional pain that is touching them deeply and impacting different areas of their lives. It could be grief, anxiety, fear or shame, or an intimacy difficulty, or the impact of a trauma.
If you find yourself in a moment like this, I can offer a way of working that helps you cultivate your inner resources to handle difficult thoughts and feelings in a new way. It’s a process that can also work at depth, getting to issues that may have their beginnings in early life and childhood.
I use a range of approaches, taking the best from mindfulness and compassion based Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (CBT), body-based somatic therapy for trauma and attachment injury, and tools and approaches from psychosexual psychotherapy for those who need it.
It is a gentle, respectful, collaborative and active process, where we explore together what is keeping you in your struggles and help you find a way forward. I offer information that might help to make sense of what’s going on, and we experiment with new skills, perspectives and strategies that help you meet the challenges of life differently.
I aim to help you get a sense of balance back, to get more grounded, resourced and rested, and support you to reconnect to what makes life meaningful for you. I want you to take any insights you have in our sessions with you into your life, and find the courage to take positive risks and change old patterns to be able to live more like the person you want to be.
The perspectives we explore, new experiences you have, and resources you cultivate help you learn about your mind. You leave therapy understanding yourself better, and knowing through experience what will help you in the future, in life’s difficult moments.
“I was battling with deep depression for some time and things were continuing to get worse as I was self-medicating to avoid the mental and emotional pain that I was in, this then led to substance addiction. I was desperate for a way out and thankfully Jim came highly recommended from a friend that is a therapist. We began to work on my challenges. It wasn’t easy facing into what my life had become, but with the support, compassion and expertise of Jim’s therapy sessions I always left feeling more hope than I had at the start of the session. Jim supported me through some dark times and thankfully after some months my life began to turnaround. We continued to work together on the deeper challenges within. It’s now been over 5 years since the last therapy session with Jim and my life has completely changed for the positive. The foundations we established are still within me, although I do still struggle with difficult moments from time to time, I have the tools to step forward and out of them thanks to Jim.”Anonymous, therapy client
If you have a question or would like to arrange an initial consultation, please send me an email and I’ll get back to you within two working days.
Whatever it is that is troubling you, we start there. You may have received a diagnosis, or have an idea of what it is that’s troubling you, but you don’t need to have it worked out in advance. Getting clear about what’s going on and what’s going to help is part of what we do in the sessions.
You can see below some of the issues I often work with. If there’s something you’re struggling with that isn’t mentioned here, that doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t work together. Feel free to get in touch and we can discuss it. If it isn’t something I can help you with, I’ll let you know and try to suggest an alternative approach or therapist better suited to what you need.
Anxiety is what happens when our threat system becomes overactive, creating a cycle of worried, anxious thoughts, physical changes like tension, nausea and palpitations, and strong urges to avoid and escape situations where anxiety gets activated.
Anxiety is a normal emotion, but it can sometimes feel like it spirals and gets out of control. It’s a very common issue, and it takes different forms. Some of the more common are Social Anxiety, Agoraphobia, Panic, specific phobias, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Experiencing profound loss is often the most painful part of life. When someone we love dies, it touches us deeply and we need time to grieve and adjust. However, grief can get complicated, stuck, or tangled with other emotions and difficulties. Sometimes the loss opens up other things that can make grief more complex to work through.
Grief can also follow a painful breakup, a child leaving home, or adapting to an unexpected change in health, role or identity. It can also be a natural response to adjusting to anticipated future losses due to climate change.
Trauma is felt in the nervous system after something overwhelming. Each person is different, but it often leaves us feeling constantly on edge and hypervigilant, or with unwanted intrusive images or memories and nightmares, physical tension or numbness, or feelings of disconnection and dissociation.
This can come from a single event, like an accident, an attack, or a life-threatening illness. Or if we faced threatening events or circumstances in childhood, defensive patterns that helped us survive at the time can end up shaping how we cope later in life, often showing up in how we relate to ourselves and with others.
Difficulties with sex and intimacy can vary widely. Issues with anxiety and performance, difficulties with desire and satisfaction, or experiences of pain, numbness or blocks to pleasure. There can be questions around sexual preferences and identity, trouble managing compulsivity, risky behaviours or problematic porn use. Some may feel unease around fantasies, fetishes and BDSM interests.
Many things influence these issues. It can be from personal experiences — recent and from earlier in life, social pressures or stigma, or sometimes there may be a medical issue involved. Stigma and misunderstanding can make it hard to share and leave us feeling isolated. There’s often shame and this area of our lives can end up feeling complicated and painful, instead of pleasurable and satisfying.
My practice is kink and BDSM friendly, GSRD aware, and sex positive.
A bereavement opens up a complicated mix of emotions, impacting life in all kinds of ways.
A recent traumatic event impacts the nervous system, and also brings to the surface older attachment wounds creating difficulties in relationships.
Anxiety spreads and grows and affects more and more areas of your life.
A difficulty in sex triggers shame, anxiety, and relationship insecurities…
It’s rarely just one thing. Life is more complicated than that. This is expected. In this work we acknowledge the different ways you are being affected. We find an approach that feels manageable, working on the most important things first. Often, what helps you in one situation can be helpful in another area. Sometimes a change in one domain can positively change other domains as well.
My approach to therapy has developed over many years, shaped by my education and ongoing studies, my clinical training and practice, and my personal values and ethics.
After more than a decade of working in the UK national health service, gaining extensive experience working with different, often complex issues, I moved into private practice where I followed my own carefully chosen training pathway.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) have been at the core of my psychotherapy practice for many years. Further training has extended my practice with somatic approaches for working with trauma and childhood attachment wounds, and a range of methods to work with sex and intimacy related issues.
Having worked with these models for some time I draw flexibly from these approaches, using the elements that are most helpful for the person in front of me.
Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are extensively researched and innovative third wave cognitive behavioural psychotherapies. CFT brings a range of sources together, including cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, with practical methods for cultivating compassion to meet the difficulties of life. ACT helps you to connect to your values and disentangle from difficult thoughts and feelings in practical ways. Together, they provide a range of heartful, wise and compassionate skills for meeting whatever life brings you.
This somatic approach to working with the nervous system helps to release trauma held in the body. The process is gentle but powerful, taking steps small enough to process without becoming overwhelmed, and deep enough to get to the root of the trauma held inside. We use a range of mindful, compassionate, somatic tools to help you access the wisdom of your own body and release the tensing, resisting and numbing, and relational strategies, all of which may have helped at one point but create problems in your life now.
A collection of tools helpful for easing sex related difficulties, working with psychological and, where possible, relational, social, cultural, systemic, and sometimes medical factors that are involved. CFT makes a powerful addition to working with shame-based difficulties, and ACT is especially helpful for changing behaviours in issues such as compulsivity or problematic porn use. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is invaluable when childhood attachment wounding or sexual assault and boundary violations are in the picture.
Bringing CFT and ACT together with somatic therapy makes it possible to work with the head, the heart and the body together. Psychosexual therapy provides specialised understanding and tools when that’s needed.
Careful combination of these therapies creates an approach that works with all our inner resources, bringing together several pathways to learning, healing and growth, reaching all parts of you that need your wise attention and care.
Sometimes the pathway starts at ‘the top’, with the thoughts and beliefs and memories that are troubling you. For change to happen, any insights at this level need to connect to the rest of the pattern, including in the emotions and the felt sense of the body.
We may sometimes come in at ‘the bottom’, to notice and work with the information in the body, in the sensations, impulses and movements. This can be worked with in its own way, and is especially helpful when we are dealing with trauma, or when the cognitive content isn’t so clear, or the patterns started very early in life.
Whatever brings you here, and whatever we end up working on together, my aim is to help you leave sessions feeling more balanced, with resources you can use in your life. It’s important that any helpful discoveries are taken with you back into your life and not left behind in the therapy session.
By the end of our time together you’ll understand yourself better, be less pushed and pulled around by difficult thoughts and feelings, and have a clearer sense of what is important to you. With new skills and perspectives, and your values as your guide, you can leave the past behind and be more present and open to life as it is now. Based on the experiences you’ve had over the course of our sessions, you can feel more confident in your ability to navigate the ups and downs of life.
“Working with Jim was extremely safe, the work was both gentle and deep, extremely holding and at times profound. As well as always being whatever I needed it to be. In the aftermath of my Mum’s suicide I really didn’t know what I needed, I was traumatised, lost and suffering beyond words but Jim has been there for me every step of the way and I can truly say I’m thriving again because of the work we did together at the start of my journey. It really set the foundation for the healing that has accrued. He helped me integrate what had happened and connect with myself again after losing my identity. I will be forever grateful for our time together.”Jo, therapy client
I’m a solo practitioner working online, and I’m not able to work with people whose needs are greater than the service I can provide. My work is therefore not suitable for:
Typically this includes people who are actively suicidal, people whose difficulties involve offending behaviour, and people experiencing psychosis or manic episodes.
I’m also not regularly available between sessions to support urgent needs or crises. You’d need to feel that a one hour, once a week appointment is adequate, and that if something comes up, you’ll be able to hold it until our next appointment. If you know you’ll likely need more contact time than this, it’s better to find a practitioner with that kind of availability.
If alcohol or substance use is part of what brings you to therapy, I ask that you’re motivated to change, and at the very minimum sober at the time of our sessions. If I have good reason to believe you’re intoxicated, I reserve the right to end the session if I feel it isn’t going to be in the interests of your therapy to continue. You’ll still be invoiced for the session.
Please contact your GP, your local A&E, or the emergency services in the country where you live.
In the UK, you can call 999 in an emergency, 111 for urgent medical help that isn’t life-threatening, or Samaritans free, any time, on 116 123.
If you’d like to ask about anything you’ve read here, or to arrange an initial consultation, you’re welcome to get in touch. Send me an email to let me know what you’re looking for, and I’ll get back to you within two working days.