Samantha is a Counselling Psychologist with more than 10 years of experience both within the NHS and private sectors working with a wide range of psychological challenges and client demographics. She provides an open, sensitive and confidential space where you will be met with warmth, respect and acceptance. This environment enables an exploration of issues or patterns of behaviour which may have been difficult to deal with alone.

Psychotherapy can be helpful for:

• Those wanting to understand the causes and the maintenance of their problems.

• Thinking about where you are in your life and how you wish to move forward.

• Exploring relationships (intimate, family, work).

• Managing general life stressors.

This may involve:

• Developing a more compassionate relationship to yourself.

• An increased ability to make connections between experiences, emotions, memories, ideas, desires and dream material.

• Increased creativity, spontaneity and flexibility.

• Greater impulse control, patience and tolerance.

• A release from the past, opening up new possibilities.

• The ability to mourn what is lost, or may not have been.

Samantha's integrative approach to therapy ensures that she is able to offer bespoke treatment plans based on an individual's requirements rather than offer a 'one-size fits all' approach. She draws on humanistic, cognitive behavioural and psychodynamic psychotherapeutic perspectives depending on the needs and wishes of clients.

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is effective for a wide range of problems. It aims to understand problems in terms of the way people think, feel and behave. CBT provides people with skills so that they are able to learn more helpful ways of coping with problems now and in the future.

• Humanistic Therapies focus on self-development, growth and responsibilities. They can help individuals to gain self-awareness in the ‘here and now’ and accept who they are by reconnecting with themselves. Mindfulness Therapy aims to reconnect people with themselves to alleviate stress. Often people have a tendency to work on autopilot, automatically completing tasks without giving them much thought.

• Mindfulness therapy helps people to feel more attuned to their emotions and generally more aware of themselves both mentally and physically.

• Psychodynamic Psychotherapy which tries to understand the reasons behind symptoms, emotional distress and relationship difficulties. It can help develop an understanding of how past experiences, current ways of thinking and relating and anxieties about the future are causing difficulties now.

• Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR). Samantha also offers specialised trauma therapy, EMDR which is based on the idea that symptoms occur when trauma and other negative or challenging experiences overwhelm the brain’s natural ability to heal, and that the healing process can be facilitated and completed through bilateral stimulation while the client is working through the trauma in the context of the safe space provided by the therapist.

Samantha has worked in various settings including secondary care services in NHS trusts, bereavement services, and education providers. Her experience ranges from working with older adults to child psychotherapy, with clients experiencing a variety of psychological difficulties. People experiencing difficulties such as: depression; OCD; relationship difficulties; stress resulting from work and other pressures; bereavement; low self-esteem; and anxiety problems, including panic, health anxiety, social anxiety and PTSD. Website: https://drsdewhurst.wixsite.com/psychology