About

Anima Talk was established in 2019. With a ethos of trying to reduce some of the barriers faced when looking for support. At Anima Talk, I provide a range of services to support this all delivered with price and ease of accessibility in mind.

I mix private practice with freelancing for charities, corporate and government organisations. I’m passionate about reducing the barriers to quality counselling where the client leads the way in terms of how we work and for how long we work. I specialise in longer-term therapy (more than six weeks) but can also work to a fixed number of sessions if preferred. All this is discussed during your first session.

I specialise in helping you to find a way through life’s difficulties by working collaboratively to provide a therapeutic style that works for you.

This may mean giving you time and space to take things at your own pace, or a more directive approach using evidence-based therapeutic exercises and sharing tools and techniques to help you in your daily life.

This approach to counselling is called Pluralistic – and the philosophy behind it is that different people will need different things at different times.

So let’s work together to find out what that is.

Here’s an example of some of the tools that we might use depending on the length of your counselling process and your own personal preferences:

• Stream of consciousness  – you lead the way and I follow, helping you to find the wood from the trees and put meaning to past life events, here and now feelings and provide a sense of clarity.
• Relational methodology – enabling you and your distress to be seen. To have somewhere safe to land, and helping progression through empathy and co-regulation.
• Mindfulness – helping with emotional regulation, improving focus and manage mental load.
• Vagal toning exercises – helping the body deal with the physical effects of anxiety, depression and trauma.
• CBT exercises to explore how your beliefs may be influencing your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
• Exercises to explore relationship to self and others.
• Life graph – to give an overview of your life experiences and help unpick how your past may be effecting your present.
• Looking at different types of thinking such as logical vs lateral thinking.
• Communication styles such as Non-violent communication / passive, aggressive and assertive / grey rock method / under or oversharing.
• Creative techniques using art, poetry or writing.
• Empty chair method – helping to process unresolved conflict or difficult life events.
• Breathing exercises – to improve mind/body connection, regulate physical response to stress or high emotion and help with panic attacks.
• Wheel of power and privilege – helping to find sense in environmental and social influences outside of your control.  
• Goal setting – helping to provide something tangible to work towards.

Working with trauma

As much as we would like the past to be in the past, we can’t get away from the fact that we carry our life experiences with us. Very often our current difficulties such as depression, anxiety, addictions, grief, and panic attacks can be directly related to traumatic expernces. I work in a trauma informed way and base my understanding of working with trauma on Herman’s three stage model of Trauma and Recovery (www.counselling-directory.org.uk/memberarticles/a-phase-orientated-approach-to-working-with-trauma)

Working with change

I use Cycle of Change a basis for helping you to make positive change. This may be looking at your use of alcohol or other addictive behaviours, right through to deciding to look for that new job or new career. Prochaska & DiClemente’s model (1983) indicates that we are always somewhere on this cycle of change in a range of things in our lives. That we move through different phases at different speeds, often repeating them. The good news is that through our own instincts and ability to reflect from our expernces we learn as we go. This learning creates an upward spiral of change. Working with change with someone that can sensitively help you with the process allows a wider lens of understanding and if you choose, accountability. Creating the environment to make sustainable positive change.