Rebuild, Reconnect, and Heal Together

When relationships face challenges, it can feel overwhelming and isolating. Constant arguments, growing apart, or facing a specific crisis can leave you feeling stuck and unsure of how to fix things on your own. You don’t have to go through this alone. I’m here to help you navigate this difficult time and find a way forward together.

How Couples Therapy Can Help

Through couples therapy, you’ll gain insight into your communication patterns, rediscover emotional intimacy, and develop practical tools to handle future challenges. Whether you’re on the verge of separating or simply need guidance to reconnect, therapy offers a safe and supportive space to address your struggles.

My Approach to Saving Relationships

I specialize in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a proven approach that helps couples repair and strengthen their bond. Together, we’ll work to uncover and address the deeper emotional needs that often underlie conflict. This process allows couples to move past recurring arguments, rebuild trust, and create a more fulfilling partnership.

Here’s what we’ll focus on in our sessions:

• Understanding your unique relationship dynamics.
• Identifying and breaking negative interaction patterns.
• Rebuilding emotional safety and trust.
• Learning tools to improve communication and conflict resolution.

Take the First Step Today

Don’t wait for things to get worse. Take the first step toward saving your relationship. I offer flexible, confidential online therapy sessions designed to meet your needs.

Click at the top of the page to book your introductory session or call me directly to discuss how I can help.

Securely attached couples have problems the same as everyone else, they just manage them differently. In therapy, I aim to foster secure attachment.

Simplified cycle of insecure interaction

Secure example of interaction

Therapy helps remodel the interaction into a more secure style by stopping the cycle and reshaping the interaction during the session. When the couple enter the emotional connection level they do not blame or criticise. Both people are available, responsive and willing to engage.

Key Points

1. Emotional Responsiveness:
   • Securely attached couples are emotionally available and responsive to each other’s needs. They recognize when their partner is distressed or in need of support and respond with care and empathy (sympathy is not empathy).
2. Effective Communication:
   • They communicate openly and honestly about their feelings, needs, and concerns. They feel safe sharing vulnerability without fear of rejection or criticism.
3. Conflict Resolution:
   • When conflicts arise, securely attached couples approach them with the intention to understand, repair, and grow. They avoid blame and focus on finding solutions, listening to each other, and remaining respectful, even during disagreements.
4. Mutual Trust and Dependence:
   • Trust is a cornerstone of secure attachment. Both partners believe in each other’s reliability and integrity. They feel comfortable depending on one another without fear of being abandoned or let down.
5. Emotional Regulation:
   • Securely attached couples are better at managing their emotions during stressful times. Instead of reacting impulsively or defensively, they take a step back to process emotions and return to the conversation calmly.
6. Sense of Security and Independence:
   • Both partners feel secure in the relationship, allowing them to pursue individual interests and personal growth without feeling threatened or anxious. Their bond remains strong, even when they spend time apart.
7. Balance of Giving and Receiving:
   • Secure attachment fosters a natural reciprocity in the relationship. Both partners feel comfortable giving and receiving love, care, and support. Neither feels like they are giving more than they receive.
8. Affection and Intimacy:
   • Securely attached couples engage in physical and emotional intimacy in ways that strengthen their bond. They express affection regularly, whether through words, actions, or physical touch, and this helps them feel closer to one another.
9. Safety to Express Needs:
   • Each partner feels confident in expressing their needs, knowing that their partner will listen and take their concerns seriously. This creates an atmosphere where both individuals feel valued and respected.
10. Resilience to Life’s Challenges:
    • Securely attached couples are better equipped to face life’s inevitable challenges together. Their mutual support and understanding enable them to navigate difficulties while maintaining their connection.

Originally developed by Professor Eugene Gendlin.

This exercise is to help you find a feeling through the ‘felt sense’ in the body. It is useful for couples in building expression of emotional experience. Avoidance in relationships often creates an emotional vacuum or constantly goes into a ‘cycle’ and finds the secondary emotion of anger.

1. Find a Quiet Space
   • Sit together in a comfortable, quiet place where you won’t be interrupted.
   • Take a few moments to relax, close your eyes, and focus on your breath. This helps calm the mind and body.
2. Pause and Check In
   • Silently ask yourself, “How am I feeling right now?”
   • Don’t rush to answer. Allow a moment for a vague, felt sense to arise—this could be a tension, tightness, warmth, or any subtle sensation in your body.
3. Stay with the Felt Sense
   • Once you notice a feeling or sensation, stay with it for a few moments. Don’t try to label or explain it right away.
   • Just notice where it is in your body and what it feels like. Is it heavy, light, warm, or tight?
4. Gently Ask What It Means
   • When you feel ready, ask yourself, “What is this feeling about?” or “What does this sensation mean?”
   • Be patient with yourself. The answer might come as a word, image, or just a sense of knowing.
5. Share and Reflect
   • Share what you noticed with your partner, describing it as best you can.
   • Your partner listens and reflects back what you said, mirroring your words to let you know they’ve heard you. For example, “You said you feel a tightness in your chest, and it seems connected to feeling overwhelmed.”
6. Listen and Connect
   • While one person shares, the other reflects without adding interpretations or advice. This creates a sense of being heard and understood.
7. Stay Curious
   • If something feels unclear, you can ask gentle questions like, “What more can I sense here?” or “Is there anything else about this feeling?”
   • As you continue, more insights might come up, and you can share them with each other.

Note

During this practice, if you feel stuck you can try giving the ‘felt sense’ a word, to see if it fits. Think of it like having a bunch of keys for a door and you are trying to find the key that fits.

If a feeling word doesn’t sit right after a while, try another word. Sometimes feelings change during this practice, just keep adjusting to the new ‘felt sense’. Give yourself time and be patient.

This is a big topic. I know — I’ve been helping people with anxiety for over 12 years. I also monitor anxiety forums, follow current research, and keep up with new developments in the field. I’ll start with a few quick points for those who want something simple first. But it’s important to say this clearly:

Anxiety usually takes time to reduce.
There’s no switch to flick, and that’s okay.

Some quick points

• Many people say, “Just make it stop.” Therapy helps, but it takes time and gentle, steady work.
• Everyone has some anxiety — it’s part of being alive. We exist, we think, we feel, and we face uncertainty.
• A normal level of anxiety helps keep us safe. High anxiety makes us feel frightened or on edge.
• Intrusive thoughts are common with anxiety. They can feel disturbing, but they are normal when the nervous system is highly activated.
• Radical self-acceptance reduces the inner critic, even though it doesn’t feel intuitive.
• “Right now I feel anxious — and that’s okay for this moment.”
• Try changing how you talk about anxiety. Some people find it helpful to say:
• “I feel energised” (instead of anxious)
• “I feel de-energised” (instead of calm)
• Understanding a bit about the body’s stress system (the HPA axis) can make anxiety feel less frightening.
• Notice the language you use: “always”, “never”, “everyone”, “forever”. Bigger words often create bigger fear.
• When anxiety is high, the mind is rarely in the present. It tends to go:
• Into the future: what might happen
• Into the past: what has happened
• Exploring the roots of your anxiety can help. What has happened to you that brought you here?
• Anxiety often shows up in the body, which can lead to frightening thoughts about health.
• Some people convert anxiety into excitement or activity — staying busy rather than settling. This keeps the nervous system activated.

Expanding on the quick points

Just make it stop

Many people say this — and I completely understand it. But anxiety usually doesn’t disappear instantly.

Think of a plane coming in to land: the descent begins far before the runway. The pilot makes small adjustments over time. Trying to go from high anxiety to zero in one jump is like trying to drop straight from the sky onto the runway.

Your whole system — body, thoughts, habits, history, environment, relationships — is involved in anxiety. Therapy helps you understand what’s keeping anxiety going, and gently helps the system come back down.

Existential Anxiety

Some anxiety comes simply from being human. Existential therapists such as Irvin Yalom describe four basic truths that create anxiety:

• We will die one day
• No one can fully know us
• Life has no built-in meaning — we create it
• Because we exist, we are always faced with choices

For some people, these truths sit quietly in the background. For others, one or more of them become the foundation for deeper anxiety.

And when someone says they have no anxiety at all, that’s usually a belief, not a reality.

Safety and Fear

A normal level of anxiety protects us: crossing roads carefully, paying attention to danger. But when anxiety becomes overwhelming, the nervous system moves into constant alertness. Small triggers feel huge. The body can’t calm down. Sometimes this follows trauma, repeated shocks, or long-term stress.

When the system is overloaded, self-soothing becomes hard.

Intrusive thoughts

Intrusive thoughts are extremely common with anxiety, even though they feel frightening or strange.

They often lead to thoughts like:

• “Am I losing control?”
• “Why am I thinking this?”
• “What if someone knew what was in my mind?”

Here’s something most people don’t realise: intrusive thoughts often appear when the body tries to relax. If your nervous system is used to running at a high level, a sudden frightening thought can act like a jolt — pushing you back up to the familiar “high” state.

It’s a biological habit, not a sign of danger.

No one wants this. But when the braking system in the nervous system is exhausted, the body struggles to calm down on its own.

And it helps to remember:
Thoughts are not facts.

Radical self-acceptance

This is not intuitive for anxious people.

It sounds like:
“Right now, at this moment, I feel anxious — and that’s okay for now.”

The key is the phrase: “at this moment.”
You’re not saying it’s good or permanent — just that it’s here right now.

Why does this matter?

Because fighting anxiety usually leads to:

• self-checking
• self-monitoring
• self-criticism

And when you constantly check for anxiety, the nervous system stays switched on.

Radical acceptance says:
“I notice it. I don’t need to fight it. It’s here for now.”

This also softens the inner critic:

• “You should be over this”
• “What’s wrong with you?”
• “Get a grip”

Acceptance replies:
“I’m human. I get anxious sometimes. It’s okay at this moment.”

It’s challenging to learn and often takes support, but it works.

How you speak about your Anxiety

Research on the “expectation effect” (David Robson, 2022) suggests that the words we use shape our experience. Some people find it easier to say:

• “I feel energised” instead of anxious
• “I feel de-energised” instead of calm

It doesn’t deny anxiety — it just frames it in a less threatening way.

The HPA Axis

A simple version:

• The hypothalamus detects stress
• The pituitary gland sends signals
• The adrenal glands release cortisol

This is the body’s alarm system.
In a healthy system, the alarm turns off and the body settles.

With long-term stress, the alarm keeps ringing. The body stays activated, and the brakes wear down. This can make relaxing feel physically difficult.

Therapy gives the system time to reset — slowly and gently.

Changing the words you use

Language shapes experience.
Sometimes anxiety grows because our words make it bigger.

• “Everyone hates me” → “Some people don’t like me”
• “This has been forever” → “It’s been a few years”
• “It will never get better” → “It feels stuck right now”
• “I’ll never find a partner” → “I haven’t found one yet”

Small changes can shrink feelings that once felt huge.

Being present

When anxiety is constant, the mind rarely sits in the present moment. It drifts:

• into the future: what if…?
• into the past: why did…?

Simple exercises help:

• noticing your breath
• feeling the temperature of the air as you breathe in and out
• paying attention to the senses

Even 10 seconds of presence is progress.

Anxiety conversion to Excitement

For some people, anxiety doesn’t look like worry at all.
It turns into:

• high energy
• risk-taking
• constant activity
• chasing excitement

Because the nervous system uses similar circuitry for anxiety and excitement, stimulation can feel good. But if the body never gets a chance to slow down, it can’t recover. It stays stuck in “go mode”.

If you would like support

If you would like support in understanding your anxiety and finding ways to feel more settled, I offer online therapy in a steady, compassionate way. We go at your pace, without pressure. You’re welcome to contact me if you feel ready to talk.

Attachment styles, affect your relationships with others. Having an understanding of these can help couples see what is occurring below the surface of awareness. This is something that I can explain during early couples sessions. This helps people understand the hidden dynamics in their relationships and why they may feel stuck in repeating negative interactions.

Attachment styles

• Secure attachment – Research suggests that approximately 55% of the British population exhibits a secure attachment pattern. This aligns with global findings, which generally estimate that around 50-60% of individuals across various cultures have a secure attachment style. These people seldom appear in couples therapy.
• Insecure attachment – Research suggests that approximately 20% of the British population exhibits an avoidant attachment pattern, and 15% exhibit an anxious attachment pattern.
• These figures are again broadly in line with global estimates, which typically place the prevalence of avoidant attachment between 15-25% and anxious attachment between 15-20%.
• Disorganised attachment – Research suggests that approximately 15% of the British population exhibit a disorganized attachment pattern. This is generally consistent with global estimates, which place the prevalence of disorganized attachment somewhere between 10-20% across various cultures.
• Some overlaps exist between styles.

Understanding Anxiety and Avoidance

If anxiety is high in a relationship then the attachments are insecure or disorganised. If avoidance is high in a relationship then the attachments are insecure or disorganised. Secure attachment is what I try to help couples establish and in doing so this will break the negative cycle of interaction.

A helpful book that highlights attachment styles is here

Helping Couples

Therapy can help couples see that the negative cycle they are caught in. This is the enemy and not each other! Early in the therapy process, I will ask you both to form an alliance against the cycle of interaction. Book an appointment today.

Couples often leave therapy until the situation is verging on collapse, it becomes a last-ditch attempt at saving the relationship.

I would encourage couples to think about therapy before it reaches this point. When you have a feeling that something isn’t right and it’s only small at the moment. Unfortunately in the main scenario, leaving it too late, couples arrive with a list of problems and look at a therapist as a person who will tell them what to do.

Maybe we could consider this as a regression to a child-like state. The problem is, you are adults and I have no intention of telling you what to do! Let me lay it out in plain terms what a therapist sees and what could be done.

He sees an interaction between two people but at a deeper psychological level. The problem is revealed quite quickly to the therapist and mostly it’s a problem the couple would not see clearly, unconscious attachment styles.

The therapist has just met the couple and the relationship with them takes time to form and that’s expensive and time-consuming. It’s only when the therapist’s relationship with the couple is fully functional and trust is established that a therapist can lay things out and the couple can consider what is being said in a more stable situation.

So you see if a couple arrives as a last-ditch attempt, time is short, and the pressure to create relationships in the room is under as much pressure as the couple’s relationship. This is basically the problem for the therapist when confronted with a last-ditch attempt. Lay the information bare, ‘this is your problem’ and risk the relationship by acting too soon, Or work on the relationship between the couple and the therapist when there is so little time left.

I would suggest not leaving it too late. I see couples online and an initial session with you both could prove beneficial.

Criticism – Sometimes is the ringleader

A slow startup technique can be helpful if you can recognise that criticism has entered into your negative interaction cycle. Stop, pause, and move to the slow start-up technique given below.

Well, a ‘slow startup’ technique can be very helpful. This involves the following three steps, 1. I am feeling ( ‘I‘ statements de-escalate). 2. About what 3. And now this is what I need and or want.

This technique moves away from blame, and criticism. It also is an implicit invitation for you to engage with your partner’s feelings in the present moment without feeling accused.

Youtube ones in a separate window here

Another possibility is to apply this sentence to a thought ‘I could be wrong’. Even if you believe you are right, it can be beneficial to add ‘and I could be wrong’. Observe the power a thought has over you if you believe its right. Specifically, intrusive thoughts are common with anxiety and intrusive thoughts only work if they hold a power.