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Shadow work coaching

Shadow work & IFS informed therapy sessions

Counselling & psychotherapy

Shadow work & IFS informed therapy

These integrated short-form sessions draw on my training and extensive experience in Shadow Work and Internal Family Systems (IFS), bringing both approaches together in a fluid and responsive way.

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A series of shorter sessions can be especially beneficial if you are seeking consistent, ongoing support, or if a shorter format feels like a more accessible way to engage with this work.

 

Ongoing sessions are typically 90 minutes in duration and are scheduled in blocks of six, held weekly or fortnightly. This structure provides a steady, intentional container for growth, integration, and meaningful change over time.

 

I also offer long-form 5-hour Shadow Work sessions in person, offering an immersive, transformative container for deep diving and focused, embodied work. â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹

My approach to psychotherapy

My approach to therapy

My approach integrates the tools and philosophy of Shadow Work, Deep Process Psychotherapy (DPP), Voice Dialogue, and Internal Family Systems (IFS). These pioneering approaches share a core understanding: we are not a single, unified mind, but a living system made up of many parts or sub-personalities — and this multiplicity is a healthy, natural state.

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These frameworks offer orienting maps, practices and processes that support deep, safe exploration. Together, we work gently yet powerfully to uncover unconscious drivers, soften entrenched patterns, and move toward healing and integration.

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By reaching toward the parts of ourselves that need attention and care, we create breathing space and develop a grounded inner attunement that allows us to experience our life and relationships with greater presence and compassion.

 

As we attend to what is painful, and integrate what we have disowned, we also discover the parts of us that have always been strong — the places within us that were never broken. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Working together

If you choose to work with me, I will not relate to you as a problem to be solved or something that needs to be fixed. I don’t hold an agenda for you or your life, and I do not pathologise the symptoms or experiences you may be having.

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I will meet you human-to-human as we gently inquire into the reactions, triggers, behaviours and patterns that no longer serve you and the stories you may have come to believe about yourself. Together, we will track and untangle the self-limiting dynamics shaped by your past, creating space for greater freedom and presence in the here and now.

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​Rather than turning away from pain or difficulty, we will turn towards, with care, curiosity, and compassion.​ Underneath reactive or destructive patterns and behaviours is often a vulnerability that is being protected. Often these destructive patterns or behaviours have a protective intention and were adopted early in life for very good reason. Without conscious work in later life, these patterns continue to play out even when the original threat no longer exists. It is these old reactive patterns that become problems for us, making life challenging, complicated and difficult.

 

I often find that once we are able to identify, build relationship and work with these vulnerable, often younger parts of ourselves, the problematic, unconscious, proactive or reactive protective patterns are no longer necessary and they rapidly reduce their hold. 

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I will support you to identify and explore these basic building blocks of your personality, your parts of self. We can work with these parts of you indirectly and directly. I'll support you to speak for and to speak from these parts of you so that you can develop an intimate and authentic relationship with yourself.

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​​​Working together means exploring and healing the issues that bring you into therapy. What is also important for me is to support you to develop greater capacity for relational ease, emotional resilience, agency, radical self-acceptance, authenticity, and a deeper sense of joy in living.​

"When we reclaim our lost souls and wounded children, befriend them, and allow ourselves to trust deeply felt compassionate impulses to reach out to them and build bonds of secure attachment, they feel safe and welcome at long last. And we feel whole"

Dr. Janina Fisher, Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors

Experiential

Our work is not only conversational; it is experiential. As appropriate, sessions may involve engaging with bodily sensations, emotions, or parts of yourself directly so that therapy becomes something you experience, rather than simply discuss. Together, we slow down and inquire into your felt sense, allowing your inner experience to unfold step by step in ways that cannot emerge through thinking or talking alone.

Mindfullness-based

We track your present-moment experience with curiosity and care, following where it naturally leads. As awareness deepens, underlying beliefs, identities, and emotional patterns gradually reveal themselves. Bringing mindful attention to experience is often like gently untangling a knot — allowing previously hidden aspects of yourself to emerge and integrate, so you can be more fully present where you may previously have felt disconnected.

Non-pathologising

Drawing from depth psychology, shadow work, and Internal Family Systems (IFS), I view symptoms not as problems to eliminate but as communications from parts of you seeking attention and healing. When experiences are understood in this way, shame softens, curiosity grows, and self-compassion naturally begins to emerge.

Parts work

Shadow work, IFS, and ego-state models offer powerful ways of understanding the psyche as a system of many parts or aspects of personality. This perspective recognises multiplicity as natural and healthy. Rather than trying to eliminate parts, we learn to understand and work in relationship with them, using these frameworks as a roadmap for meaningful and lasting change.​

Trauma-informed

Trauma work is not only about recalling past events or constructing narratives. It involves gently supporting the repair of the physiological and emotional imprints left by overwhelming experiences — the ways trauma continues to live in the nervous system, the body, and patterns of response. My understanding of trauma is informed by the work of Onno Van der Hart, Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Janina Fisher, and Stephen Porges.

Neurobiologically-informed

A neurobiological lens helps us understand how nervous system regulation, implicit memory, defence responses, and brain-body processes shape present experience. Psycho-education and simple frameworks can support you in making sense of your patterns, reducing shame, and creating space for new possibilities and understanding.

Therapy based in systems theory

Influenced by shadow work and IFS, I work with you as a whole system — supporting collaboration between parts rather than working against them. Over time, you develop a more grounded and compassionate leadership within yourself, allowing deeper integration, healing, and sustainable change.

Further details of how I work and my terms can be found here - About My Practice.

Learning to see our selves

Learning to see our 'Selves' - working with Parts

Because trauma is often such a complex and overwhelming field, we benefit from a map or a language to understand, process and heal - Shadow work therapy, Internal Family Systems theory and Ego State therapy give us this map and language.

 

It is based on the idea everyone is made up of different ‘parts’/'aspects' - just think of the times you’ve been in two minds about something, had an internal battle with yourself, or maybe felt and thought many different things at once. Just like individuals, all parts can have their own emotions, behaviours, beliefs and experiences. we all have ‘Parts’ of us, that help us function. 

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I will support you to identify and explore these basic building blocks of your personality, your parts of self. We can work with these parts of you indirectly and directly. I'll support you to speak for and to speak from these parts of you so that you can develop an intimate and authentic relationship with yourself.

Underneath reactive or destructive patterns and behaviours is often a vulnerability that is being protected. Often these destructive patterns or behaviours have a protective intention and were adopted early in life for very good reason. Without conscious work in later life, these patterns continue to play out even when the original threat to the individual no longer exists. It is these old reactive patterns that become problems for us, making life challenging, complicated and difficult.

 

I often find that once we are able to identify, build relationship and work with these vulnerable, often younger parts of ourselves, the problematic, unconscious, proactive or reactive protective patterns are no longer necessary and they rapidly reduce their hold. 

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For me, this is the core component of inner transformation, for when you have met and attended to yourself in this way, a sense of Self-Leadership or Sovereignty emerges from which we natuarlly begin to function. From this place you will see and be able to take the action needed to step into a joyful life full of agency and energy.

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Please find further information about the multiplicity of the psyche here.

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"Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift - your true self - is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs."
 
- Bill Plotkin -

What do you want to focus on?

Sessions can be free-flowing and tailored to your specific concerns and level of integration. You are the guiding force, so the conversation and the work goes as deep as you are comfortable with. I provide an accepting and compassionate holding that is highly supportive as well as, when needed, challenging: The challenge coming with a kindness to gently encourage your deeper unfolding. 

Do you want to build your self-esteem and your ability to be authentic?

  • Building greater inner confidence to carry into your relationships and your life.

  • Identify, clarify and work with your personal needs and desires.

  • Forming and holding good boundaries.

  • Integrating healthy anger for authentic assertiveness.

  • Stepping in to more clarity and presence in your everyday life.

  • Accessing your innate well of inner power, allowing you to confidently pursue and achieve what is important for you and your life.

Are you suffering from overwhelm or burnout? Do issues with your ability to build healthy relationship stop you from taking steps forward?

  • Exploring and healing patterns of overwhelm, hopelessness or incapacitating vulnerability.

  • Opening into greater intimacy in your life through exploring barriers to intimacy and how this leads to patterns of avoidance.

  • Accessing the spontaneous, playful and creative parts of you through working with your Inner Child.

  • Increasing equanimity and inner peace through working with and bringing healing to your addictions, compulsions or obsessive behaviours, thoughts or feelings.

  • Processing stuck emotions to facilitate a lived experience of flow in your life. Accessing and having grief held and witnessed.

Do you struggle with a harsh inner-critic, fear or anxiety and it's holding you back?

  • Exploring the roots of stress, confusion and overwhelm.

  • Building inner and outer trust through working with the inner-critic and outer-critic, judgement and toxic shame.

  • Working with and healing traumatic patterns.

  • Accessing equilibrium and self-regulation through working with states of physical activation (excessive sympathetic nervous system arousal), anxiety, fight or flight patterns.

Do you want to break through those barriers to progress and forward movement in your life?

  • Accessing meaning and purpose in your life.

  • Harnessing greater wells of energy through identifying and resolving the unconscious drivers behind unhelpful thought patterns, dynamics, beliefs and behaviours.

  • Accessing and making space for your innate your inner leader.

  • Internalise authentic support and constant guidance, building resilience to carry you forward.
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