Beth Nicholas

Psychotherapist

Our brains, our thought processes, and our assumptions about ourselves and the world are mostly formed in infancy. They then sometimes go on to run our whole lives, if we let them.

As children we learn to bend and twist to fit into with the world around us and the expectations of those most present in our lives. As we develop in this confusing world, where we are not always fully accepted, we learn to hide or abandon parts of ourselves in order to stay safe and connected.

We make decisions in these early years that stay with us and can affect the rest of our lives.

These difficult experiences and traumas, can progress into various symptoms of trauma: depression; anxiety; chronic ill health; difficulty in relationships; and a sense of being lost or overwhelmed. All of these are welcome as aspects of your path to be overcome through therapy.

But what if these underlying processes could be softened?

I am a UKCP trainee psychotherapist in my third year of Core Process Psychotherapy. Core Process is a powerful, gentle, and mindful approach to therapy. At the core of each of us we are inherently healthy, and through therapy we can look at ways in which we have formed unhealthy patterns and untangle those knots. The more insightful and self-aware we become in the present moment, the more we can observe our thoughts and feelings, and loosen the grip of this “toddler wisdom”.

I am also training in Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Internal Family systems (IFS). IFS enables us to access conflicted aspects of ourselves which are compelling us to behave in ways that are harmful to our relationships and our lives. SE is a potent toolkit for working with trauma, aiming to allow it to complete and resolve for good. SE is based on the growing understanding that our bodies can be the key to unlocking our prior traumas.

Being able to look at our feelings is the most important and cherished gift we can give ourselves. Our feelings are all we really have. Our work will teach you, experientially, how to look after your own nervous system and build more choice around your reactions to your feelings, and emotions.

“The problem’s not that the truth is harsh but that liberation from ignorance is as painful as being born. Run after truth until you’re breathless. Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh. These ideas will take a life to comprehend, a hard one interspersed with drunken moments.” Naguib Mahfouz

After an initial short, free, introduction, I recommend six sessions. On our sixth we review and see how the work is going together. I change a reduced rate of £40 per one hour session.