Psychotherapy in London with Emma Pearson

City Therapy Rooms

Therapy in London

CityTherapyRooms
Face to Face Therapy in London

Emma Pearson

Emma Pearson Psychotherapist in City of London
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You don’t have to manage alone, but perhaps you’ve been trying to for a long time

You may be feeling lost, disconnected from others, unsure about what you need to be or do to feel steadier about the world and your place in it.

You may be stuck in repeating destructive patterns with the people you care about, feeling increasingly misunderstood and angry. Your partner may feel like a stranger.

Sometimes you can find yourself both struggling to cope alone and struggling to know how to reach out.

Many of these struggles have their roots in our relationships, with those closest to us, with ourselves and with the wider world.

In this situation you may wish to seek help from someone from outside your usual circle who has training and experience. My work centres on relationships, what can go wrong in our relationships, and the trauma that can result. I have worked with many people who have found that it is possible to work through these kinds of difficulties, to feel more at ease.

Psychotherapy with Emma Pearson

I am an experienced, integrative, humanistic psychotherapist. I work with individual adults and couples. I have an interactive, down-to-earth style, and bring both warmth and challenge.  I have been working with clients in private practice since 2018 when I qualified. I work with individual adults and couples. I am accredited with the country’s leading professional association for psychotherapists, the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and abide by their ethical code.

When you are struggling to feel OK about yourself

You may be struggling to feel comfortable to be more fully yourself or your struggle may be about feeling disconnected from the people who matter to you. When these things go awry in our lives we can feel depressed or anxious, angry or ashamed.

You might be asking yourself:

What’s wrong with me? I don’t know why I feel so bad. I don’t know what to do.

Why am I always afraid of being rejected by my family and friends, feeling on the edge of things?

I work so hard to keep everyone happy and it’s never enough. I feel burnt out and I need someone to think about me for a change.

I get so worked up and worried about things, but I can’t understand why. I should be able to cope.

I feel like my self-confidence has disappeared. I keep doubting myself. I don’t know who I am anymore.

No one seems to care or understand. There’s no one I can turn to. I feel so lonely.

Using an empathic mix of challenge and support, I would work with you to understand what’s happened. We would explore your current experiences and your history, considering what beliefs, values and patterns have got laid down. We would focus on allowing space for whatever you’re feeling and exploring how this translates into what you’re feeling in your body.

We would think about what’s been useful to you and what hasn’t, and how to let go of what is no longer serving you. And an important part of the work is often accepting what can’t be changed and grieving what is lost.

This work can take some time but, by engaging in the process, it can be rewarding to find yourself living life more fully, feeling more open to fun, joy and connection again.

When your relationship is in trouble

In my work with couples, we are looking to build reciprocity and mutuality which I believe are the bedrock of a good relationship. Such relationships can be a source of joy and support, but if you are caught in conflict with someone who is important to you it can be devastating and exhausting.

I know it feels like a big leap of faith to let a stranger into such a private space, whether you’re a couple, a parent and child, siblings or friends, but it can be really beneficial to have a third person, a professional, hold a space for you both to explore what’s gone wrong.

When you’re in a stuck relationship, you may have these kinds of thoughts:

We used to be so close and have so much fun, but things seem to have drifted and we don’t know how to reach out to each other anymore.

We just can’t talk about what’s gone wrong between us. It feels too hard. I feel so guilty and they’re so angry. We are just creeping around each other.

We seem to be caught in an endless argument. I can’t say anything right. I can’t stand all this fighting.

We’ve tried to talk and just come away feeling more bruised. We’ve hurt each other so badly, can we ever recover?

Working with Couples in Therapy

Couples may seek therapy because of what feels like endless arguing. It might be because you’ve lost the connection between youor you’re wanting different things. It may be that sex has become boring, non-existent. You may be going through a difficult transition becoming parents, moving in together, getting married, moving country, becoming empty-nesters, moving into retirement. The issue may be the aftermath of an affair. And if the relationship seems to have reached an end, I offer a safe space for you both to make sense of what’s happened and explore separation or divorce.

A parent and child, siblings or friends may need help to be able to talk about how a relationship has broken down or an estrangement. The issue might be managing sibling rivalry, the death of a family member or a sense of betrayal or abandonment. Serious illness or disability can upset family relationships and friendships, with repercussions over years.

In our work we would explore the history of your relationship, holding space for both of you to feel seen and heard. We would think together about the impact of your individual experiences, considering patterns learned in childhood. We might work on how to talk about feelings or manage disagreements more constructively. We may consider how to hold healthier boundaries with each other. I may give you some joint or individual exercises to try out in your own time, between sessions, to help you build new skills for hearing and relating to each other better.  Even if the relationship seems to have run out of road, we can work on how you can reach that point with mutual understanding and acceptance.

When traumatic experiences feel isolating

Trauma disconnects you from yourself and others, and trauma work in therapy can help you to feel more connected again, to yourself, others and to the world around you.

When you have been abused, neglected or abandoned your entire pattern for relating with others can be damaged. You may feel it’s all your fault. You can get caught in fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Your nervous system may be working overtime. You don’t feel safe. You may be finding it hard to trust anyone and feeling alone. What has happened may feel unsayable.

Your trauma may also be a terrible loss or illness at a difficult time of life. It may be a sudden event that has turned your life upside down. Maybe it didn’t happen directly to you, but to someone close to you and you can’t make sense of why it’s impacted you.

The most important aspect of any kind of trauma work is to first create safety. It can be a slow process to build trust and feel comfortable enough in therapy. It takes the time it takes. We would work together to explore what has happened and understand the impact on you, with space for you to safely process whatever arises. Our hope is that via this process you will gradually begin to feel safer, more in control and more connected again.

When the world around you feels like it is the cause of your distress

The world may feel like it’s becoming more chaotic, precarious and difficult to make sense of. You may be feeling like you’re caught in an onslaught of global events, natural disasters, climate change and biodiversity loss, economic instability, technological change and political polarisation.

The personal impact can be hard to identify as it creeps up slowly. Maybe you have become aware of a chronic low-grade anxiety or a difficulty in making longer-term plans such as having children, committing to a relationship or a career. You may feel you are too glued to the news, but you can’t look away either. Are you mourning for a way of life that you feel is disappearing? We can find ourselves making our world smaller to feel safer, retreating. Or we might be increasingly seeking comfort in bad habits that distract us from the things we feel powerless to control.

It can feel like it’s taboo to talk about these causes of distress, and we can feel like we should just get on with it, but I want you to know this can be taken seriously. It can be an enormous relief just to be able to talk openly and honestly about your feelings and experiences. To understand your individual response, it may also be useful for us to explore how you have learned to be in the world and in relationships. In this way we may be able to help you find some steadier ground for yourself. We may also be able to figure out how you can build internal and external support, how you might be able to act and contribute rather than feeling helpless or hopeless, and how to bear what you can’t change.

Psychotherapy Qualifications, Training and Experience:

“Each of us secretly and desperately yearns to be ‘met’ – to be recognised in our uniqueness, our fullness and our vulnerability.”

(Hycner and Jacobs, 1995)

I am a humanistic integrative psychotherapist. My work draws on the person-centred, gestalt and transactional analysis approaches and I work relationally, which means using what arises between us as well as what you bring from your life and experiences.

I trained over five years at the Metanoia Institute in west London, one of the most prestigious training institutions in the UK in counselling and psychotherapy. I have an MSc in Humanistic Psychotherapy, validated by Middlesex University and accredited by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), the main organisational body for psychotherapy in the UK.

I also have a Postgraduate Diploma in Humanistic Psychotherapy and a Postgraduate Diploma in Humanistic Psychotherapeutic Counselling, both from the Metanoia Institute.

I have a Certificate in Working with Couples from Juliet Grayson’s Therapy and Counselling training programme, accredited by the National Council of Integrative Psychotherapists (NCIP).

As a Registered Member of the UKCP and a member of the Metanoia Institute, I adhere to both organisations’ Codes of Ethics.

Before working in private practice, I worked for two community-based counselling services in West London.

I have a degree (BA Hons) from Manchester University. My first career was as a UK national news journalist. I then went to live and work abroad in several countries in Africa before settling in Kent with my family.

Areas I work with:

Contact:

If you would be interested in working with me, please get in touch. Email is best as my phone is usually on silent, but you can also text or call and leave a voicemail if you prefer. Unless I am on leave, I will get back to you within 24 hours Monday to Friday.

Once we have established if my availability matches yours, we can arrange a time to have a free-of-charge phone call to discuss how we might work together and if we want to organise an initial session.

An initial meeting is an opportunity for us to meet for a full session and see if we feel comfortable to work together. Afterwards I would usually give you a couple of days to think and decide if you want to continue.

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Rates:

For individuals, my weekly session fee is £80-85 for 50 minutes, depending on the time of day.

I have a limited number of concessionary sessions available for individuals on low incomes.

For couples, my session fee is £120 for 60-minutes. Initial sessions are 90 minutes at a fee of £150.

Sessions:

I work from The Practice Rooms in London Bridge on Tuesday afternoons and evenings.

I also work in Tunbridge Wells on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and I see clients Online.  Please contact me for details and fees.

Directions to The Practice Rooms

£75 - £140
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