Trauma therapy for adults, in Enniskillen and online
You may not think of it as trauma
Some people arrive knowing exactly what happened to them. A crash, an assault, a death, a night they can date.
Others arrive with no single event to point at. Nothing that would sound like much if you said it out loud. Just a long stretch of years in which it was safer to be watchful, or useful, or quiet, and a nervous system that learned its lesson thoroughly and has never fully unlearned it.
Both are trauma. The second kind is more common, harder to name, and much less likely to be recognised.
If you have spent a long time wondering whether what happened to you counts, that question is itself worth bringing.
Single-incident and developmental trauma
The distinction matters because it changes what the work looks like.
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Single-incident trauma follows something identifiable. The memory tends to be vivid and intrusive, the responses sharp and specific, and the person often knows exactly what set it off.
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Developmental or complex trauma builds over time, usually in relationships you could not leave and could not change. Often in childhood, though not always. There is frequently no single memory to work with, because the difficulty is not one event but the shape a person had to take in order to get through many.
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That shape is what shows up later. Being unable to relax without a reason. Reading a room before you enter it. Taking responsibility for other people's moods automatically, before you have decided to. Finding closeness uncomfortable and distance unbearable. Reaching adulthood highly capable and privately certain that you are getting away with something.
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Complex PTSD is one name for this. It is recognised in the ICD-11 and is diagnosed comparatively rarely, so a great many people who fit the description have never had it applied to them. You do not need the label to do the work, and I do not provide assessment or diagnosis.
What people describe
Everyone's version is different, but some things recur.
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Feeling permanently braced, without being able to say what for
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Startling at things other people do not notice
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Sleep that never quite finishes the job
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Going numb or blank under pressure, then being unable to explain why afterwards
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Anger that arrives faster and larger than the situation warrants, or never arrives at all
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Reading other people constantly, for signs of a shift
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Apologising reflexively
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A sense of being separate from other people, as though watching through glass
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Understanding your own history in detail and finding that the understanding changes nothing
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Long stretches of coping well, interrupted by something that flattens you entirely
None of this is weakness or a failure of effort. It is what a nervous system does after it has spent a long time keeping someone safe, and has not yet had the conditions it needs to stop.
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If you also recognise yourself in descriptions of sensory overwhelm or being autistic or ADHD, the neurodivergent therapy page covers that side of the work.
Why insight has not been enough
There is a reason talking about it, on its own, so often fails to shift this.
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Your system decides whether a situation is safe below conscious thought, and far faster than thought. When it reads danger, the parts of you that manage reflection, conversation and connection are dialled down. That is not a metaphor. It is physiology, and it is not available on demand.
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So a person can describe their own history with complete accuracy, understand precisely why they respond as they do, and still arrive at every session braced. The insight is real. It is simply not reaching the level where the problem lives.
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This is why the order matters. Regulation before reflection. When that sequence is reversed, therapy can become something you perform rather than something that changes you — and people often conclude they are beyond help, when what actually happened is that the work started in the wrong place.
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If you have had therapy before and valued it and still felt something was left untouched, this may be why.
How I work
I am a counsellor accredited with the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society and an occupational therapist registered with the HCPC. I qualified as an OT in 2016 and spent the following decade in community and mental health settings, including specialist trauma services, working with people living with PTSD and complex PTSD.
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That combination means we can work with the nervous system directly, rather than only with what you think and feel about it.
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The work moves through three stages, though rarely in a tidy line.
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Safety and stabilisation. Nothing useful happens while a system is braced. We start by building enough steadiness that difficult material becomes workable — practically and specifically, based on what actually settles you rather than what is supposed to. For many people this stage is longer than they expect, and more valuable.
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Processing. Once there is enough capacity, we can turn towards what happened. Gradually, at a pace you set, and with the explicit aim of not overwhelming a system that has already been overwhelmed. This is where counselling and attachment-based work come in — understanding the patterns, and where they were learned.
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Integration. The shift from surviving to living. Less time braced. More room for relationships, work, rest, and the ordinary business of a life that is not organised around threat.
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My attachment work draws on the Dynamic-Maturational Model, which understands attachment patterns as strategies that made sense in the conditions they developed in — not as damage or deficit. That framing matters, because most people arriving here have already spent years being told, or telling themselves, that something is wrong with them.
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I do not offer EMDR or trauma-focused CBT. Both are effective for many people, and if that is what would serve you best, I will say so.
What a session is actually like
Slower than you might expect.
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There is no requirement to tell your story, and no expectation that you arrive with something prepared. We may spend time simply noticing what your body is doing. Some sessions involve a great deal of talking. Some involve very little.
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Nothing happens that you have not agreed to, and stopping is always available to you. That is not a formality. For a great many people, the experience of having a say in what happens next is itself part of the work.
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I keep substantial gaps between clients so that I arrive settled and unhurried. A regulated nervous system in the room is part of what makes this work, and it cannot be rushed.
The Deep Regulation Session
For some people, regular sessions are not quite the right shape. Where a nervous system has been in survival mode for a very long time, what helps is a sustained process with enough time and space in it for the system itself to change.
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The Deep Regulation Session is 110 minutes, in person only, and forms part of an 8–16 session Just Right State Programme (Sensory Attachment Intervention Centre). It is a somatic, body-based approach to nervous system regulation rather than a longer conversation.
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It is in person because it draws on occupational therapy assessment and sensory work that cannot be replicated through a screen.
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This pathway begins with a free 30-minute call, not a booking. We would talk about whether it fits before anything is arranged.
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Online and in person
Online, across the UK. Trauma work translates well to video, and for some people better — you are in your own space, with your own things around you, and you can end the call. That degree of control is not a small thing when the difficulty is about not having had any.
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In person, in Enniskillen. A quiet consulting room, with no communal waiting area. Some elements involving movement and pressure are only possible in the room.
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Sessions are 50 or 80 minutes. The longer session gives room to move between talking and body-based work without watching the clock, which many people find matters for this kind of material.
Who this suits, and who it does not
It tends to suit people who:
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Have a history they have never fully worked through, whether or not there is a single event in it
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Are exhausted from holding themselves together and cannot see how to stop
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Have done talking therapy, valued it, and still feel something remains untouched
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Recognise themselves in descriptions of complex PTSD, with or without a diagnosis
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Want to understand their own system rather than get better at overriding it
It may not be the right fit if:
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You are currently in crisis or at immediate risk — urgent support is the right first step, and I can help you identify it
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You want short-term, structured symptom management, which other approaches deliver better
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You are looking specifically for EMDR or trauma-focused CBT, which I do not provide
If you are not sure, the conversation below is the place to find out. I would rather tell you honestly that I am not the right person than take on work I cannot do well.
Common questions
Do I have to talk about what happened?
No. Not in the first session, and not on any timetable. A significant amount of trauma work involves building capacity rather than revisiting events, and for some people the detail never needs to be spoken aloud at all.
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What if I do not remember it clearly?
That is extremely common, and it is not an obstacle. Memory works differently under threat. We can work with what your system does now without a complete account of what produced it.
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Is it going to make things worse before they get better?
It should not, and avoiding that is the point of starting with stabilisation. Trauma work done in the wrong order can be destabilising, which is exactly why the order is what it is. If something is too much, we slow down. That is a normal part of the work, not a failure of it.
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How long does it take?
That depends on what you are bringing. Some people come for a defined piece of work over a few months. Others stay longer. We review it together rather than my imposing a number at the start.
Does what happened to me count?
If it is still affecting you, it counts. Comparing your history against other people's is one of the most reliable ways of staying stuck in it.
A conversation first
Before anything is booked, we have a free, no-obligation 30-minute conversation, by phone or video. A chance to describe what is going on, ask whatever you need to ask, and get a sense of whether working together feels right.
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There is nothing to prepare and no pressure on the call.
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