Sophie Gibbons
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This professional is accepting new clients but may have a waitlist. Please enquire with them directly to discuss availability.
This professional is accepting new clients but may have a waitlist. Please enquire with them directly to discuss availability.
About me
I am a BACP-registered and accredited psychotherapist with 20 years’ clinical experience, offering depth-based psychotherapy for adults. I specialise in working with survivors of complex and organised abuse, including Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organised Abuse (RAMCOA), as well as complex trauma (CPTSD), sexual abuse, and primary dissociative disorders.
Much of my work is with people whose difficulties developed in the context of developmental trauma, attachment disruption, chronic relational harm, and extreme abuse. Many clients come having lived for years with dissociation, emotional overwhelm, fragmentation, shame, or a sense that something is fundamentally “wrong”, often after finding that short-term or symptom-focused approaches have not addressed the underlying causes of their distress. I offer a steady, carefully paced therapeutic space where these experiences can be explored safely, with respect for the adaptive function of dissociation and trauma responses.
Alongside complex trauma and dissociation, I work with anxiety, depression, emotional regulation difficulties, relationship problems, shame, identity-related distress, and persistent feelings of disconnection or numbness. I have extensive experience providing specialist therapeutic support to survivors of sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation (CSE), and trafficking, and I routinely work with clients who are neurodivergent and/or LGBTQ+/queer. My practice is affirming and non-pathologising, and I am attentive to how identity, power, difference, and marginalisation shape psychological distress and access to care.
My approach is Gestalt psychotherapy - a relational, embodied form of therapy that attends to present-moment experience, emotional, and relational processes, bodily responses, and dissociative adaptations. I understand symptoms not as deficits, but as meaningful survival responses to what has been lived through. Therapy is collaborative and thoughtfully paced, with particular emphasis on safety, stabilisation, and the development of greater awareness and choice, especially when working with complex trauma and dissociation.
I currently offer online therapy. Face-to-face sessions will be available from my office in Burcot, Oxfordshire, later in 2026.
Taking the step to contact a therapist can feel daunting. If you think my way of working may be right for you, you are welcome to get in touch to arrange a free initial conversation.
Training, qualifications & experience
Registered and accredited member of BACP
PG Diploma in Counselling & Psychotherapy awarded 2008
Experience
January 2011 - present: psychotherapist in private practice
April 2006 - September 2012: therapist at The Listening Centre, Oxford
October 2004 - October 2008: advocate for Oxfordshire Mental Health Matters
Member organisations
school Registered / Accredited
Being registered/accredited with a professional body means an individual must have achieved a substantial level of training and experience approved by their member organisation.
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
Therapies offered
Fees
£75.00 per session
When I work
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