Sarah Z Lloyd Counselling and Psychotherapy

ONLINE COUNSELLING & PSYCHOTHERAPY IN DORKING

My Approach

It’s possible to heal without having a focus on past traumas when using IFS or TIFT. When we think of trauma, we think of something significant that has happened to us. However, we can live with the stress chemistry and unconscious survival adaptations of past traumatic events or neglect without knowing it. Studies of thousands of people who have had Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) have shown that chronic illness, syndromes & pain, addictions, anxiety, depression, rigid or poor coping, proneness to PTSD, dissociation and many other chronic symptoms arise out of early adaptations to stressful or traumatic experiences. When challenging life circumstances accumulate, rigid coping behaviours, beliefs and emotions can emerge that helped us to survive in early life but are no longer helpful now.

I can help with a range of issues:

I offer online counselling and psychotherapy services in Dorking and across the UK. I have experience working with a range of issues such as:

  • Anxiety, Generalised anxiety disorder
  • Overwhelm & burn out
  • Emotional dysregulation
  • Zoning out or feeling numb
  • Stuck cycles of relating and/ or behaviour
  • Low self-worth, low confidence
  • Recent trauma- PTSD, medical or birth trauma
  • Childhood trauma and/ or neglect
  • Intergenerational trauma
  • Dissociation or high fragmentation

Internal Family Systems Therapy

IFS proposes that people consist of many parts and a central core Self. It is an evidence-based psychotherapy, helping people heal by accessing, understanding and healing their protective and wounded inner parts. IFS creates inner and outer connectedness by helping people first access their resourceful ‘Self’ and, from that central core, come to understand and heal their parts. Three main parts exist within every individual: managers that run every day life and work very hard to pre-emptively avoid situations that might bring emotional pain. Firefighters that activate to minimise feelings of pain, fear or shame from a traumatic experience and exiles that hold ‘burdens’ of emotional pain, shame, trauma, overwhelm, neglect and abandonment etc. The manager and firefighter parts try to bury the exiled parts to prevent pain. (link to embedded video)

How Does IFS Therapy Work?

With IFS therapy, I help you learn about the different parts of yourself, their interactions with each other and how they may drive specific behaviours. With my help, you may see how painful or traumatic past events may create an imbalance, causing one part or part to be more dominant and other parts to react in opposition to this. Part of IFS therapy is establishing a trusting relationship between you and your parts and facilitating healing from these traumatic or painful past experiences and positively embedding Self- led regulation. The goal is to restore harmony to your system and promote the leadership of the Core Self.

Trauma Integrating Flow Therapy

TIFT is a very gentle but powerful therapy that brings about deep shifts and healing without focussing on past trauma. Trauma experts now teach that it is not the traumas themselves but the resulting adaptations that enable survival, that cause difficulties in later life. Establishing relational safety is key and then, working towards your chosen goal in the present moment, the Therapist uses 3-4 current events, in repeating cycles, to prove to your body and mind that you are safe now. Past adaptive strategies, triggered by current events, become conscious and the safety and support with the Therapist update your body-mind that you have survived and no longer have to cope alone. The survival strategies, thoughts, feelings and behaviours from the past are ‘melted’ and new, flexible choices emerge. The focus is on creating safety and releasing system wide constraints rather than targeting specific traumas. Through activating specific, small movements TIFT helps reduce the charge of a traumatic experience held in your body and views integration as an essential component for lasting change, enabling you to return to life with improved function. It increases your capacity to meet life without fear and releases the capacity to thrive rather than merely survive. TIFT works well with PTSD, complex PTSD, chronic syndromes, mental health disorders such as, anxiety, depression, physical pain, stress and tension, and any sense of disconnectedness and dissociation from life, your relationships or with yourself. It can also work with shame states that can result in an inability to create the life you want.

How does TIFT help?

  • It can create a solid sense of Self and self-esteem
  • Reduces shame and increases self-compassion and understanding about habits and behaviours
  • Increased capacity to meet life challenges
  • Creates healthy boundaries between self and others and the ability to care for yourself.
  • Increases awareness of toxic relationship dynamics and enables movement towards greater safety and health
  • Creates the ability to be fully present now and feel safe in relationships
  • Establishes and improves emotional regulation and self-awareness
  • A greater sense of safety, space and expansion in your body
  • A quiet and calm headspace
  • It creates flow from quiet relaxed body states to energised responsiveness and back
  • Releases the innate self-optimisation within the client to develop and move towards desired outcomes.

Therapy for Therapists

There is an unspoken ‘myth’ in the therapeutic community that therapists have dealt with all their issues, yet conversely, there is often a feeling of shame in realising that they have not. For many very skilled and experienced therapists, there can be much emotional dysregulation, fragmentation and even high levels of dissociation present, even after years of ‘good’ therapy.


I specialise in working with therapists who want to develop a solid core self and an even greater ability to regulate themselves and their clients. I work with the view that Therapists are usually wounded healers who can give away to others the healing that they gain for themselves. It takes courage to seek out skilled support and admit that the ‘good’ therapy ,received in the past, has not sufficiently adjusted to the unique complexity of your past context and survival adaptations in the here and now. Therapists I have supported have reported profound transformations in their lives, improved functioning, self-regulation and self-care and their ability to work more deeply with their clients has increased markedly.

Consultation

I am trained to offer online supervision. I offer a consultation for Trauma Integrating Flow Therapy. Whilst I will advise on ethical issues, I do not offer more general supervision and consultees are required to have a general supervisor to address broader issues in their practice.

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© Sarah Z Lloyd Counselling and Psychotherapy

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