HSP Therapy
About HSP
Being a highly sensitive person (HSP) is a normal biological individual difference in temperament and physiology inherited by about 1 in 5 of just about all animals. Those with this trait notice more subtleties and process information more deeply.
Noticing more subtleties means that HSPs also become more easily overwhelmed than others by prolonged, intense, or chaotic sounds, sights, etc.
The difference is quite profound, affecting everything HSPs do and many bodily responses—for example, HSPs are more sensitive to pain, caffeine, medications, temperature, light, sounds, and hunger. HSPs are more reflective, learn more slowly but thoroughly, and tend to be highly conscientious.
Self Tests
To find out if you are highly sensitive, there are two scientifically validated self-tests you can take. Do take a look around both of these websites on high sensitivity as they have a wealth of information about the trait.
Please click on one of the links above to take the self tests
Individual Therapy
Relationship Therapy
Sessions and Fees
Individual therapy
Helps you find your way back to yourself
We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
Most people want to feel contented – happy in their own skin.
I believe everyone has the answers they seek inside them. My role is to help you rediscover and reconnect with yourself to find those answers that make sense for you.
I work with people over a short or long term to help them bring about effective change or enhance their wellbeing. I am particularly interested in helping people find their purpose in life and in doing so, add more meaning to their lives.
I specialise in working with sensitive people. The likelihood is that you’re seen as a maverick, a visionary and may be described by others as intense. These are often natural hallmarks of sensitive people. I will help you understand your superpowers and work though what’s holding you back.
The types of issues I work with include:
- Abuse
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Bereavement
- Career counselling
- Couples and relationship therapy
- Dementia support for those diagnosed and their family members or carers
- Depression
- Eco distress of climate crisis
- Eco-grief of nature, animal and human losses
- Fertility and infertility
- Loneliness
- Low self-confidence
- Low self-esteem
- Mid life and menopausal anxiety and depression
- Postnatal depression
- Relationship issues
- Rights of passage including adolescence, middle age and old age
- Sexual issues
- Spiritual awakening and experiences
- Stress
- Termination/Abortion/Miscarriage
- Terminal illness
- Trauma
- Work related issues
Relationship therapy
Helps you find your way back to each other
To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart
and to sing it to them when they have forgotten.
Do you want the best for yourself and for your partner?
Do you know what you need from your relationship?
Do you know how to get your needs met in a collaborative, rather than a competitive, way?
Competition leads to resentments and grudge holding. It leads to bickering, being unkind and eventually to a lack of respect for each other. That’s the killer of most relationships. Lack of respect.
We get into competition with each other when we believe that there’s not enough – not enough love, not enough time, not enough intimacy, not enough commitment, not enough energy, not enough power, just not enough of what we need.
The first step in repairing and healing relationships is to want to believe that there is enough to go around, and that each and all of you can get your needs met.
After this it’s about learning to ask for 100% of what you want, 100% of the time and not assuming that others can read your mind. It’s about asking with the understanding that others can say yes or no, and also that people can change their mind – a yes or no is not necessarily forever.
Relationships are emotional attachments and understanding your and your partner’s ways of emotionally attaching is also vital.
I have been working with couples, family members and coaching work colleagues and teams for 15 years on creating and maintaining healthy and happy relationships. This inevitably covers how to deal with conflicts too. You are human and your relationships have ups and downs, good times and serous conflicts. It’s not the conflicts that are the issue, it’s how you recover from them, learn from them and reduce their frequency that matters.
Types of relationships
The types of relationships I work with include the following:
- Highly sensitive couples where both of you are highly sensitive
- One of you is highly sensitive and the other isn’t
- Same sex couples
- Polyamorous relationships
- Asexuality
- Demisexuality
- Conscious relationships
- Break up or divorce counselling
- Adult family relationships
- Conflict resolution in personal and in work relationships
Who I work with
I work with highly sensitive people (as defined by the research of Elaine Aron et al and the researchers at sensitivityresearch.com) from all over the world and who have many types of backgrounds and jobs. Here are just a few of the types of people I have worked with over the years –
- Activists – people who typically will put their wellbeing on the line for a cause they believe in mostly for the wellbeing of all life
- Artists, musicians, writers, dancers and creative people
- Career break. People taking a break while they figure out what is right for them
- Charity, not-for-profit and NGO people
- Counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and coaches
- Doctors and surgeons
- Educators, trainers and organisational consultants
- Entrepreneurs and business people including CEOs
- Holistic and alterative therapists and healers including masseurs and somatic healers
- Marketing and sales people
- Mums, dads and carers both stay-at-home roles and where combined with a paying job
- Nature workers including rewilding, conservation, land and wildlife management, horticulture, farmers
- Retired people
- Scientists and researchers
- Spiritual people including some who have a spiritual or religious profession
- Tradespeople including construction workers
Supervision
I will be offering supervision for highly sensitive counsellors, psychotherapists and coaches starting in April 2024. Please email me or fill out my contact form if you are interested and I will be in touch next year.
Sessions & fees
Four ways we might work together
Online video sessions
I work with people all over the world currently via Zoom video.
Telephone or voice-only sessions
If you prefer a voice-only session, we can work via telephone or with Zoom with the video turned off.
In-person indoor sessions
My consulting room for in-person sessions is 3 miles from Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK. I am in the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) designated area.
In-person walk and talk sessions
Photo of my consulting room.
Photo taken in Autumn of nearby area to walk and talk
Booking a session
Please go to my booking page and book yourself in for a free 30 minute discovery session. During this session you can ask questions, I will share a little about how I work and we will decide together if we are a good fit for working together.
Once you’ve had a free 30 minute discovery session then standard sessions are either 60 or 75 minutes.
I provide short term counselling and longer-term psychotherapy.
I recommend that in the beginning we meet for 6 weekly or fortnightly sessions. During our first session we will work together to agree a focus for our work. We will hold a review on the fifth session and decide whether to carry on or stop at the sixth. If we decide to stop, session six becomes a closing session for our work.
Fees
60 minute
Individual Session
£70
75 minute
Individual Session
£87
75 minute
Couple or Group Session
£110
I offer some lower fees for people on lower incomes. Please talk to me about this.
If your income is £70,000 per annum or higher, I request a voluntary, higher fee. This higher fee enables me to offer the pro bono counselling and support work that I do for charitable organisations such as the Climate Psychology Alliance.