About me
Hi, I can offer trauma-informed therapy and counselling to help you go deeper into issues where you may have a good understanding, but things don’t really change.
Trauma can be the root cause for many emotional, psychological, work, social, family and relational difficulties.
As Gabor Maté says: “Pay attention to your insecurities. They are not there to taunt you. But to show you where to heal.”
Trauma-informed therapy helps you connect with compassion to your ‘symptoms’.
According to your needs, we combine two effective trauma-focused therapies. Internal Family Systems (IFS) & EMDR.
Each issue (anxiety, hopelessness, for example) tells a heartfelt story and it’s good to get to know this story, and how it can unwittingly create adaptations that may cause problems in adulthood.
So with IFS we get to know your nervous system and re-regulate your adaptations. We let them stop doing their symptom-making ‘jobs’. Your hopeless part stops making you feel hopeless. We can change their roles - your system can even take a 'holiday'.
And with EMDR we can additionally 'reprocess' disturbing memories. You may have suffered abandonment, neglect, abuse and bullying. We go back and reclaim and rescue you from these traumatic memories.
(And traumatic memories can be like repetitive little videos on repeat, going over the same trapped dilemma over and over again.)
In resolving these embodied struggles, we can reclaim your authentic self from the past; and reconnect you with a renewed peaceful, safe, body and mind.
I’m dual-trained with a lot of common sense, so we can use both approaches.
Trauma therapy requires some somatic engagement, so we do some resourcing, body scans, tapping (bilateral stimulation) and guided imagery.
Your feelings are in your body, not in your intellect. Intellectual discussion has its place - it can be called ‘insight’. But true healing requires ‘direct access’ to the trauma in your body.
I am an IFS Institute Level-3 trained practitioner & an EMDR UK accredited practitioner. I have had many years in the NHS as a clinical nurse specialist in liaison psychiatry services.
Here I learnt about the interface between mind and body and how trauma is often responsible for mental and physical health conditions, often due to somatisation or through sitting on your emotions.
Indeed, arguably most mental health and psychological problems can be seen through the lens of trauma.
The nervous system often carries wounds that never go away. They dysregulate you.
They become adult ‘performances’ such as: feeling unlovable, people-pleasing, overworking, holding shame, shrinking you down, and making you invisible.
These are survival performances. The nervous system has 5 main approaches to your survival: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop.
You may have anxiety, fears, panic, obessions, addictions, sexual and eating issues, compulsions, rumination. This is all about survival.
You may continuously devalue yourself and attach to abusive people. You may try to prove yourself to narcissists etc. You may have codependency, chronic fatigue, somatic pain.
All of which are arguably a commentary about how your nervous system assumes you must perform to survive.
Or you may underperform, and feel hopeless, invisible, desperate, you may even dissociate, have a poor sense of Self.
You may have had serious mental health issues, C-PTSD, DID, structural dissociation and have ‘emotional instability’. You may have been given a diagnosis which labels you forever.
You may avoid relationships, get scapegoated in groups, you may self-harm by hating yourself, you might carry a lot of anger and shame.
None of any of these conditions are sent to hurt you. They are protective parts of the nervous system.
For example shame is really trying to keep you safe, lowering you in the tribe. Hiding you.
So together we explore how you adapted to survive, and how these protective ‘parts’ overdo it. They are protective - they do not mean to do it, it is how you coped often as a little boy or girl.
So I hope this explains ‘trauma-focused’ therapy, in that most mental health problems, relational and social difficulties, can be seen through the lens of trauma.
’Illness’ arguably isn’t an illness. It is the way your body is attempting to heal you or protect you. Feeling sick became how you coped maladaptively.
For example anxiety is a normal, healthy part of you, akin to an alarm system from your nervous system, designed to protect you and keep you safe.
However It may be overworked and hypervigilant because of what happened previously to you. So we are not ‘removing’ parts of you, we are updating the software in your body to feel safe and secure.
If we heal the trauma with compassion the protective ‘symptoms’ become almost superfluous. And if you have major traumatic memories we can use some EMDR as well.
It is a gradual process. Your nervous system won’t change overnight. It needs to feel safe and develop a connection with your sense of Self.
Thank you for your time and all the best with everything.
You can read more on my website johnnietaylor.co.uk
Training, qualifications & experience
- IFS Institute-trained practitioner completed Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 of the IFS established trainings
- EMDR Association UK ACCREDITED EMDR Europe and UK therapist
- Further training in integrating IFS and EMDR and Attachment-Informed EMDR
- BA Honours Psychology, City University, London
- Postgraduate Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling, Goldsmiths College, University of London
- Reg Dip in Mental Health Nursing, RMN, University of Greenwich
- MSc Mental Health, combined NHS and Kings College London
- Postgraduate CBT training, Psychological Therapies, University of Sussex.
- Attachment-informed EMDR Unleash Parts 1 & 2 training
- IFS Part 1 and Part 2 and 3 training with the IFS Institute
- Judge for The Orwell Dystopian Fiction Prize
Member organisations
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred). Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision. Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training. All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Other areas of counselling I deal with
- Internal Family Systems' or parts therapy
- Codependency
- Recovering from narcissistic abuse
- Complex post-traumatic stress disorder
- Scapegoating and systemic repeating problems
- Attachment-focused EMDR
- EMDR for complex trauma
- Intergenerational trauma
- Inner child healing
- meditation and body scan somatic approaches
Therapies offered
Fees
£80.00 - £140.00
Concessions offered for
Additional information
For Internal Family Systems therapy with EMDR, charges are normally around £80-£140 per session, depending on time and duration.
Please contact me for discussion of cost, I don't want to exclude anyone.
Some 90 minute sessions are available sometimes.
You can pay as you go. There are no complicated contracts.
When I work
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Midweek evening appointments are available
Further information
- I'll try and support you as best I can. I tend to have sessions on Zoom and other confidential online platforms.
- If you have specific preferences, I am more than willing to accommodate your preferences.
- If you don't want to reveal or speak much about your issues, we can work anyway using trauma techniques which often connect with feelings and parts of the nervous system.
- If you are anxious in the beginning and find relationships scary we can go gently at the 'speed of trust'.
