One-To-One Therapy
As a health psychologist, I have a specialism in working with health conditions. I am also an accredited CBT Therapist with 3 years of experience working in the NHS with people with anxiety and depression. I offer therapy sessions and also the option of shorter, guided self-help sessions, facilitated by my team.
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On this page, you will find the following (click to navigate to)
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My approach
I use a range of psychotherapeutic approaches to work with you, depending on your goals for therapy. These include:
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Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
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Mindfulness
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Acceptance & commitment therapy (ACT)
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Compassion-focussed therapy (CFT)
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Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
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Therapy will always start with an assessment. Here I ask a lot of questions to get a broad and detailed idea of what has been going on for you and what your difficulties look like. My aim for all therapy is to provide you with a better understanding of what is contributing to difficulties and importantly how to make changes and interrupt unhelpful cycles. After the assessment, we will therefore generate some hypotheses about the sorts of things that might be contributing to and interacting with your difficulties. This will form a basis for where we will start experimenting with changes.
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To best empower you, I like to use a scientific practitioner approach, where we collect data on changes made to see how that informs our hypotheses. In this way, we can work towards the therapeutic goals you have and periodically check in on them. Each session is informed by your preferences and we work out together what will be the most beneficial use of time.
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Sessions are 55 minutes long and usually, there is an agreed home practice for you to work on in between sessions.
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Guided self-help
Guided self-help sessions are shorter than therapy sessions and less explorative. They are intended to provide you with information and techniques you can use to help with your presenting problems. Currently, we are offering guided self-help for irritable bowel syndrome, using the evidence-based protocol assessed in the large randomised control trial I was involved in.
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This will usually involve 6-12 sessions with one of my colleagues. Dr Alicia Huges is a health psychologist and Amina Saadi is an assistant health psychologist and trainee psychological wellbeing practitioner. Guided self-help will not be suitable for everyone.
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Price & payment
Paced programme
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2 sessions a month with Dr Sula Windgassen (usually fortnightly)
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Clinical assessment, with validated questionnaires
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Therapeutic goal setting and monitoring
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Mapped out treatment plan developed collaboratively
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Tailored informational handouts, worksheets and recorded practices
Monthly price: £450
Minimum suggested length: 3 months
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Intensive programme
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4 sessions a month with Dr Sula Windgassen (usually weekly)
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Clinical assessment, with validated questionnaires
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Therapeutic goal setting and monitoring
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Mapped out treatment plan developed collaboratively
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Tailored informational handouts, worksheets and recorded practices
Monthly price: £750
Minimum suggested length: 2 months with the option to switch to the paced programme after 1 month
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Payment for packages are required ahead of each month. Payment plans are available (payment split in half and taken at the 27th and 15th of each month).
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Areas of expertise
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Long Term Health Conditions
The biomedical approach to medicine tends to leave people with chronic illness/long term conditions with insufficient support and uncertain about how best to manage the burden of their condition. This can lead to overwhelm, distress, isolation as well as poorer health outcomes. Chronic illnesses can also impact your sense of identity, with many experiencing a sense of loss.
The goals of therapy vary from client to client. Therapy may involve:
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Exploring the impact on identity and creating value-based goals
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Increasing understanding of health and symptoms
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Managing the emotional impact
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Finding ways to manage symptoms and symptom burden
I work wth all long term conditions and persistent physical symptoms. My particular clinical and research interests include bowel, bladder and pelvic conditions.
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Trauma & Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Working in a busy NHS service, with a high prevalence of PTSD and trauma, I am well-experienced in working with trauma presentations. I am trained in trauma-focussed CBT and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Both approaches are evidence-based psychotherapies for PTSD. Increasing EMDR is used for trauma presentations beyond PTSD.
EMDR uses what is called "bilateral stimulation" to help the brain process emotionally charged memories. The International Association of EMDR describes this process:
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"Our brains have a natural way to recover from traumatic memories and events. This process involves communication between the amygdala (the alarm signal for stressful events), the hippocampus (which assists with learning, including memories about safety and danger), and the prefrontal cortex (which analyzes and controls behavior and emotion). While many times traumatic experiences can be managed and resolved spontaneously, they may not be processed without help.
Stress responses are part of our natural fight, flight, or freeze instincts. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may create an overwhelming feeling of being back in that moment, or of being “frozen in time.” EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories, and allows normal healing to resume. The experience is still remembered, but the fight, flight, or freeze response from the original event is resolved."
I am working towards my advanced EMDR accreditation with an experienced EMDR Consultant, receiving regular supervision
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Stress, Overwhelm and Perfectionism
Perfectionism does not mean doing things perfectly. It does mean having a lot of "should" thoughts and unrelenting expectations it feels hard to achieve. This can lead to procrastination, pushing yourself really hard and/or self-criticism.
I use CBT, ACT and compassion focussed approaches with clients to explore what is at the heart of these expectations and experiment with trying alternative approaches in relating to yourself
We are rarely explicitly taught how to manage stress and overwhelming emotions. We generally make our own way through trial and error, which can be really effective until it no longer is. I work with clients to help unpick present and past stressors contributing to overwhelm.
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