07887 502770
therapy@michellematthews.co.uk
CCPE
Beauchamp Lodge, 2 Warwick Crescent, London W2 6NE
I am a psychotherapist who works with individuals on life challenges, trauma and relationship difficulties.
I began my 5 year transpersonal training in 2005 at CCPE in London. It is an integrative training with a spiritual overview.
During this time I became a mother to two girls and experienced overwhelm and feeling out of control. I saw how our childhood and early life experience show up in our relationships and parenting and why we repeat patterns.
I became interested in how trauma and stress manifests in the body and how to build capacity and integrate it.
Life is not something we perfect but meet in all its messiness!
‘If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change’ – Wayne Dyer
Sometimes the greatest challenge is to actually begin; there is something deep in us that conspires to remain within safe boundaries, to stay the same.
Years ago my neighbour here set out to build his new home. He had just stripped the sod off the field to begin digging out the foundation, when an old man from the village happened to come by.
He blessed the work and said: ‘You have the worst of it behind you now.’ My neighbour laughed and said: ‘But I have only just begun.’ The old man said: ‘That’s what I mean. You have begun; and to make a real beginning is the most difficult act.’
John O’Donohue
Get in touch by email or phone
Life Challenges
Some life challenges are difficult but they help us develop aspects of our self, new qualities and inner strength. Therapy can help us gain perspective and support.
Other challenges can be utterly destabilising. Raising deep questions such as…Who am I? What is the point? Therapy can provide support with these feelings of loss, grief, depression and helplessness.
Trauma
Trauma happens when we experience something that we are not able to absorb into our body and make sense of. ‘Too much, too fast, too soon.’ It triggers our survival response, fight, flight, freeze, and faint. When we are not able to discharge these body sensations we separate off this part of ourselves so that we don’t have to re-experience the helplessness and overwhelm.
Trauma can appear as single event such as accidents, life threatening illnesses and disasters. Or the traumas of childhood, development trauma and abuse.
When we integrate trauma and make sense of it we are able to live more fully.
Relationship Difficulties
Our first relationship is with our Mother. We live in her womb for 9 months. We absorb her emotions & rely on her for our survival. Our father makes up the other half of who we are, even if he is not present.
These are our blueprints for relating and we bring them unconsciously to our relationships. If they have been healthy they give us a good foundation. If they have been difficult we can find ourselves recreating painful experiences. This is our starting point.
