Lean on Us

Individual Adult Support

We are experienced in coaching young adults, adults, and seniors who have been effected by childhood trauma and/or who are caring or friends with someone with a trauma history.

We want to give you the best possible guidance wherever you are in your life.

Families

If you think your family could benefit from support and are feeling stuck give us a call.

Whatever you are going through we know it is within the additional context that accessing support from public services currently is challenging. This places more responsibility on you to navigate private services for help and not really knowing where to start and if what you try is necessarily the best place to start.

Working with us will provide you with the peace of mind that we get it and we can offer you emotional support and clear recommendations on what will help.

Social Workers

We help those helping families by offering social work supervision with a trauma recovery mindset. Professional wellbeing and family focussed.

Organisations

We are happy to provide our services to Local Authorities and organisations that would like to access our specialist assessments and support for families. We can offer consultations as a starting point.

We can undertake Local Authority Assessments upon request.

Important - Acute Need

We are unable to help support with immediate crisis and/or acute psychiatric or suicidal risk. For help you need to contact the emergency services, Samaritans, or 111 NHS if in the UK. Our sessions will be planned and we aren't immediately available in-between.

When you contact us we will ask you if you are receiving treatment for acute mental health need because that may be your first focus to help stabilise your mental health health before we can help. We ask you to kindly respect our boundaries in this way; they are there to best help support you.

"My whole career I have sought to better understand how childhood abuse and neglect impacts you and how to heal. I have developed insights that make our offer to you very special.

Trauma that is 'avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood and untreated' as Levine and Kline (2007) so helpfully frame, 'causes human suffering'.

Until you are aware and ready to attend to this impact it'll impact every decision you make and every relationship you have, including the one, very importantly, with yourself. It can lead to mental health difficulties, drug and alcohol dependency or other coping mechanisms, relationship breakdown, and I've seen the loss of children to adoption or other permanent arrangements. Trauma can pass down from one generation to the next - something called 'generational trauma'. Or you may quietly navigate life with low self-esteem and self-worth, anxiety, never experiencing fully the joy and opportunities that life could offer.

Then comes the problem of where to seek help. It's a minefield. Some service offers have a long way to go to be truly trauma aware, sensitive and responsive. Access to services, public or private, is ever more challenging, and some can be reactionary and time limited. Your time with them can feel rushed and you may feel misunderstood.

I'm driven to create this safe space here where you feel truly understood from a trauma recovery perspective. This is the foundation to anything else you ever access in the future. It all starts by slowing things down and you receiving a proper bespoke assessment. Our assessment will mean you don't have to share your story repeatedly, you can share our assessment, or parts of it, which will do the speaking for you. Our assessments advocate for you when your own voice is growing. Our assessments are devised to be an intervention in themselves providing new valuable insights. If you would like us to we can help you ourselves following the assessment and/or we can help you navigate the minefield of interventions on offer out there if that's what's needed too.

You will know when the time is right for you and when you're ready, we are ready, and we can't wait to meet you"

Kelly :)

FOUNDER

Some things it may help you to know

Incorporate some Joy

The world of trauma recovery is heavy. We see people in distress and its important to acknowledge that sensitively and appropriately. We do aim to lift you up. It sounds counterintuitive but we are BIG on joy and awe as antidotes to trauma. It can't be all serious all the time. That's not how we recover.

We support you to create glimmers, which are triggers for joy, as they can correct stress neurobiologically and physiologically very quickly.

You don't have to tell us 'everything'

We know that you might be scared to access help because you think you have to tell us the painful details of your story.

You do not have to do this with us.

Part of the journey of recovery is understanding who has earned the right to know your story.

What you do choose to share with us will be held highly confidentially. The only time we have to share is if we are concerned about yours or someone else's safety and then we will only share what is relevant.

Safe Relationships Heal

When we acknowledge trauma and it's impact, when we give it space, when its treated, it loses it's bearing.

"As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage. Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives."

Bessel Van Der Kolk The Body Keeps The Score

The Three C's

Community

Compassion

Curiosity

Begin to wonder why things are the way they are. Try to start recognising what you think and feel. Build your support network.

Self compassion is essential to trauma recovery.

'Talk to yourself like you would someone you love' Brenè Brown.

We normalise distress

Emotional responses to distress is normal. You develop ways to survive and those coping mechanisms worked once upon a time. They were there to protect you. Your coping mechanisms are rockstars because sometimes they were the only things there in the absence of safe relationships that helped you to survive.

However, sometimes those coping mechanism, when we are no longer actually experiencing the distressing things that happened, can get in the way of our healing and progressing.

We are living in uncertain times. Everything we are experiencing impacts us and when recovering from trauma it further compounds our ability to cope. That it also normal.

Truly understanding this and being kind to yourself about it is essential to recovery.

The 'problem' is not in you

Blame helps no-one. Blame is situated in pain and distress. As a child it is not your fault that you experienced the things you did. You also can't 'just get over it'.

We are interested in you and your life, your relationships and the system around you. We take a big lens to a problem and like to think creatively about how to move that issue forward. There is no judgement and no finger pointing.

Our interest is only to help you work towards solutions to really difficult things helping you build your agency to excel. We are alongside you but you are in the control seat.

You will know when the time is right to make the changes you need toward healing. We will be right here when you a ready.