Lucy Clarkson

Therapeutic Psychospiritual Coaching & Mentoring to Highly Sensitive People (HSP) | MBACP-registered Counsellor & Psychotherapist | Accredited Highly Sensitive Human Academy™ Coach (IACTM) | Online worldwide + nature-based work in Warwickshire | @InnerWildlight

Hi, I'm Lucy.  I am a highly sensitive person (HSP), intuitive, and experienced Therapeutic & Psychospiritual Coach & Mentor

For the past 10 years I have practiced as a qualified Counsellor & Psychotherapist (MBACP), working therapeutically with highly sensitive and neurodivergent people. My work is also informed by more than  25 years of professional and personal exploration across psychology, psychotherapy, spirituality, consciousness, intuitive development.

Before moving into this work I had a successful management career in the corporate world.  I later stepped away  to raise my children and follow a very different path - one centered around healing, human development, and what I came to understand as my deeper purpose.  

Alongside my therapeutic training, I am in ongoing training in Shamanic Counselling following four years of close 1:1 apprenticeship. This gently informs my understanding of spiritual awakening, intuition, energy, connection and our relationship with the natural world.

Today, I primarily coach, guide and mentor people who want to understand themselves more deeply. Many are highly sensitive people (HSPs), neurodivergent or differently wired; others are navigating a healing journey, questioning old identities, exploring spiritual awakening, or becoming increasingly curious about consciousness and the deeper nature of being human.

My approach is integrative, relational and deeply individual. I weave psychotherapeutic understanding and trauma-informed awareness with Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Self-led parts work, embodied and somatic awareness, nervous-system education, meditation, heart-centred practice and intuitive open awareness.

Rather than approaching sensitivity as something to overcome, I help people understand their own nervous system, patterns, inner world and sensory experience so that they can develop greater self-understanding, Self-leadership and confidence in the way they naturally experience the world.

Much of my work now takes place online, allowing me to work with clients across the UK and internationally. For those who are local to Warwickshire, I also offer a limited number of in-person and outdoor walking sessions in the natural world.

I am also an Associate with the Highly Sensitive Human Academy™ and The Therapeutic Coaching Consultancy in London, supporting people to understand their sensitivity within both their personal lives and workplace environments.

Based in rural Warwickshire, UK, I work predominantly online with clients globally, while continuing to allow nature, ecology and the living world to quietly inform everything I do.

What’s happening for you?

As a highly sensitive person, you may experience life with unusual depth, noticing subtleties others miss, feeling deeply affected by relationships and environments, needing more time to process, or becoming depleted when you spend too long overriding your own needs. You may be questioning how much of yourself you have adapted, masked or quietened in order to belong.

Perhaps you are learning to understand your sensitivity or neurodivergence differently; navigating relationships, work or a life transition; exploring spirituality or consciousness; strengthening boundaries; recovering your confidence after burnout; or simply asking deeper questions about who you are and how you want to live.

My work is about helping you understand your particular way of being, your nervous system, patterns, sensitivities, intuition, strengths and needs, so that you can make choices from greater clarity rather than continually adapting yourself to environments that do not suit you.

You don’t need to become less sensitive. You may need to understand your sensitivity well enough to build a life that can actually hold it.

Much of what I offer has grown from my own lived experience, so I meet this work with humanity, curiosity, empathy and without judgement  supporting you towards greater Self-understanding, inner authority and Wild Self Leadership.

How I work...

I have always been highly sensitive, observant and insatiably curious about what it means to be human. I love depth, meaningful conversation and exploring what sits beneath the surface of our everyday experience.

My work is rooted in the belief that meaningful change happens through relationship and through reconnecting with the whole person: mind, body, nervous system, intuition, spirit and environment. Depending on what you need, our work may include conversation, reflection, meditation, embodied awareness, movement, breath, nature connection and creative or symbolic exploration.

I work primarily as a Therapeutic & Psychospiritual Coach and Mentor, while drawing upon ten years of counselling and psychotherapy practice when deeper therapeutic understanding is helpful. I offer a relational space in which you can slow down, make sense of what you are experiencing, understand your patterns and parts, and listen more closely to your own inner wisdom.

At times I may guide you into grounding or meditative open awareness, helping you move beneath the noise of the thinking mind and access a deeper sense of Self. From there, we can explore what is arising with curiosity rather than judgement, developing greater clarity, choice and Wild Self Leadership.

My approach is integrative, humanistic and psychospiritual. I weave together psychotherapeutic understanding, Internal Family Systems (IFS) and parts work, embodied and somatic awareness, nervous-system education, transpersonal coaching, intuitive perception and nature-based practice. My ongoing training in Shamanic Counselling also gently informs the work where appropriate.

Although much of my work is with Highly Sensitive and neurodivergent people, you do not need to identify with either. I also work with people drawn to deeper questions around consciousness, spiritual awakening, identity, meaning and living more authentically.

My practice is informed by

Humanistic & relational practice - Person-Centred Counselling and Psychotherapy

Psychospiritual & transpersonal coaching - including specialist HSP coaching and heart-centred practice

Parts & depth work - Internal Family Systems (IFS), Self-leadership, shadow work, Jungian and psychodynamic perspectives

Embodied & nervous-system work - somatic focusing, Polyvagal-informed practice, mindfulness and Mindfulness - Based Cognitive Therapy (MCBT)

Shamanic & nature-based practice - guided journeying, nature connection, cyclical living and the Wheel of theYear

Creative & intuitive exploration - spirit animals, archetypes, imagery, inner active cards, oracle and tarot where these feel meaningful to the client

Neuroinclusive practice - informed by neurodiversity, sensory difference and diversity & inclusion training

Women’s cyclical health - menstrual health and cycle awareness where relevant

Allied with Nature

Although much of my work now takes place online, my practice remains deeply allied with Nature.

I understand humans as part of the living world rather than separate from it, and nature connection continues to inform the way I think about sensitivity, regulation, belonging and what helps an individual organism flourish. This perspective is also deepened through my ongoing training in Shamanic Counselling, which explores our relationship with the natural world as living and relational.

For some clients, simply bringing more awareness to environment, season, sensory experience and connection with the Earth can become an important part of our work together.

For those based locally, I offer a limited number of outdoor walking sessions in rural Warwickshire, where conversation can unfold alongside movement, woodland, water, wildlife and the natural rhythms of the land.

Where I work

My practice is now predominantly online, allowing me to work with Highly Sensitive People and other clients throughout the UK and internationally.

Online work offers a quieter and often more accessible space for sensitive nervous systems, while still allowing the depth, attunement and relational quality that sit at the heart of my work

I create affirming spaces for highly sensitive and neurodivergent people, self-healers and those navigating change, awakening or a deeper questioning of how they want to live.

My clients come from all walks of life: leaders, creatives, professionals, parents, entrepreneurs and people simply trying to understand themselves more deeply.

Ultimately, I’m less interested in labels than I am in the person underneath them.

I want the people I work with to feel seen, understood and increasingly free to live from their own nature rather than continually adapting themselves to somebody else’s idea of who they should be.

Testimonials:

"Lucy has been beautifully sensitive and intuitive in finding ways to help me to find my voice. To begin, there were things that I could only share through writing. With repeated experience of Lucy's calm, consistent presence and empathic, wise guidance, I have been able to talk more. This is a work in progress! 

 I will never forget the enormous role that Lucy has played at such a challenging point in my life. Her sensitivity in understanding how different humans (and their brains) 'work' and then creating a space that is inclusive and supportive of diverse processing styles is a true gift; both in the sense of Lucy being gifted and gifting to others. Lucy is an incredible listener (with the most expressive face!); she is a person who asks thoughtful and challenging questions (striking the right balance in gentleness and directness); and, she is the safest person I have known."

"I started working with Lucy after the end of a long term relationship, at a time when I felt like a scaled down version of myself, a version that had lost all sense of who I was. Recovery felt impossible and I felt bereft and hopeless. I read Lucy’s bio and I knew there was something different to other therapists bios. It felt more human somehow. 

In the past I’ve struggled with the therapeutic relationship, it often felt very rigid and sometimes impersonal, which made it hard for me to evolve the trust needed to work on a deeper level. Lucy is very different in this sense. In a carefully managed way Lucy brings her humanity in to the sessions, and it means I can also bring myself more wholly. 

As someone that is AuDHD and a highly sensitive person (HSP) I need to be held carefully, it can take a long time for me to feel comfortable and able to share openly. Lucy adapts her approach to allow for that and meets me where I am. I feel very seen and accepted by Lucy, which means a lot when I have spent so much of my life feeling different and in turn flawed. Lucy has helped me to recognise that being highly sensitive is a wondrous thing in so many ways. It’s not always easy and there are times when the world feels too much, but the ability to feel, sense and attune is a gift. And for the times when it feels too much there are ways to manage that, once you cultivate awareness. 

Lucy masterfully integrates her training of more traditional approaches, alongside more spiritual and intuitive ways of working, making it a much deeper way of working. It has helped me to begin the journey of reconnection to my true nature and the power of shadow work and how healing it can be. 

I’m incredibly grateful to Lucy for her support, guidance, and expertise over the time we have worked together, it has been deeply transformative for me."

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"I approached Lucy after experiencing a difficult personal loss and trauma in my life. It had opened up wounds from the past and in my relationships which were preventing me from healing. From the first session, I felt as though Lucy was able to tune into my situation, my sensitivities and anxieties. She combines deep expertise in psychotherapy with wisdom and a spiritual awareness that I had not been able to find in previous therapists. I am so grateful to Lucy for helping me gain awareness of, to accept, and even embrace the way I see the world, my sensitivities. Masking them had become exhausting. Through the journey, she has helped me drop increasingly from the head to the heart, to begin re-discovering who I am in my essence and to feel a greater sense of ease, freedom and confidence moving forward in my life."

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"Lucy is so easy to talk to, she listens and is non-judgemental; but beyond that she is warm, assimilates what you say intelligently and asks pertinent questions to enable you to consider what is right for you. There are no time pressures, conversations are centred around you, your thoughts, feelings and emotions, until the answers emerge. Lucy has great knowledge around her subject too and has mentioned books that I may like to read which have proved so enlightening. I feel honoured and blessed that Lucy agreed to work with me, to walk beside me, metaphorically hold my hand and help me find my way."

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"My journey with Lucy has been life changing. I accessed support at a turning point in my life and I am so incredibly glad that I did. Lucy challenged and supported me in equal measure. Her challenge was to encourage me to address, go through and understand painful experiences so that I could genuinely deal with them and then let go of them. Her support was to help me get through the painful bits and understand that I could do it. She brilliantly weaved in some theory into our sessions to provide a framework, and a conscious understanding of what I was going through. This helped provide context and also helped me understand the appropriateness of my feelings."

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"I can't speak highly enough for Lucy's sessions. The knowledge and skill set Lucy holds is second to none. She is the most professional, caring, considerate natured person I've ever met and perfect for her role as a Therapist and because of this Lucy is very easy to talk with and open up to. Due to Lucy's nature, I found sessions very relaxed and we quickly found clarity from within to the answers needed for the relationship issues I'd been having, that I had no idea were suppressed until Lucy helped me unlock these from deep within at a pace that suited me."

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"I will always be eternally grateful to Lucy for all she has done and continues to do for me.

By way of background I have and continue to have a successful professional career and for many years suppressed the cost of this to my mental well-being and the cost to my humanity and relationships with those closest to me. What appeared to the outside world to be a wonderful life was in reality far from this.

I came to Lucy in a very dark place, at a very dark time and in immense trauma which I didn’t really understand. To Lucys great credit this now feels like a lifetime ago and a different person and whilst challenges remain I now enjoy a level of inner peace and strength i never knew existed previously. My own journey with Lucy is ongoing with many further challenges ahead but through our work I feel I both have the support and understanding to tackle this in ways I never previously enjoyed.

Lucy’s warmth and humanity combined with her undoubted technical prowess has allowed me to properly discover my true self and emerge from a long and difficult darkness I didn’t at first even recognise and thought ‘normal’. She has enabled me to for the first time in my life to truly understand and question myself and to properly understand and ultimately heal some very painful wounds from the past and address those in the present with new found true confidence and belief

Lucy is not afraid to challenge and push me. She asks questions and raises challenges that even my closest friends and family would never venture to do. But she is only able to do this because of the trust that we have built and always does so with incredible emotional intelligence and empathy and always brings to bear her own experiences and feelings in a way that many therapists would fear to do.

Lucy is a first class therapist and an amazing Human and if you are prepared to put in the reciprocal effort and to take on the challenges she raises you will ultimately in my opinion and experience, find your life a lot more fulfilled as a result of the time you spend with her."

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I found Lucy at a time when I needed help the most. I am an over-thinker and I suffer from anxiety and her presence came as the brightest light to shine on my journey through life.

Since our paths crossed, and I am beyond thankful they did, she has helped me understand my feelings, my traumatic experiences and guided me in order to cope with the difficulties of being a daughter, a wife, a parent, a business woman…a human being in today’s world.h

With her strength as a professional and as a woman, her knowledge, kindness and empowering spirit she has listened, she has grounded me, she has opened my eyes and has taught me strategies to better deal with my thoughts and feelings. She has made it possibile for me to believe I could. I can. I am and will for ever be grateful to her."

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"Lucy has helped me discover, feel, and accept my transgender identity. This is something that took a long time to not feel ashamed about and Lucy helped me get there independently by providing me a nurturing and kind space to be vulnerable in. She shared that this was a new challenge for her, but I am so glad that she stayed with it at the time as I really have benefitted from over two years of therapy unpicking my traumatic past from this identity and feeling more whole. Lucy brings a huge range of skills to therapy, drawing upon lots of varied fields of thought and practice, from abandonment issues to spiritual practice. I found the combination of this and many other therapeutic approaches so beneficial for understanding the complexity of my feelings, both past and present. She has been so supportive and has provided really good practical advise for self-care and communication with my family, taking on more of a coaching role at times. She is also super aware and pro-active in thinking about your holistic needs, suggesting when we might not need to see each other as often or when I might benefit from more specific therapy for gender transitioning. She has made me feel very safe and helped me feel and love my identity and gender. I will be forever grateful and could not recommend her highly enough."