Depression can develop when painful feelings, such as anger, grief, or fear, are pushed out of awareness. We aim to help individuals access and experience underlying emotions that are often blocked by anxiety, guilt, or self-criticism. In work actively to identify these unconscious emotional processes and support our patients to face these feelings. As emotional barriers are overcome, clients often experience a release of internal tension, a reconnection with authentic feelings, and a restoration of vitality.

Anxiety is a helpful physiological response designed to alert us to an internal danger (a thought, feeling, or an impulse). However, often we try to regulate our anxiety by eliminating the stimulus for our anxiety (i.e. avoid airplanes, in the case of aviaphobia). But then anxiety starts limiting your life and remains in charge. We help people learn how to regulate their anxiety by uncovering and resolving unconscious emotional conflicts that fuel it. Rather than just managing symptoms, the therapy helps clients face avoided feelings safely, reducing internal pressure. As emotional clarity grows, anxiety lessens, and clients regain a sense of calm, confidence, and emotional freedom.

At Co-Creating Change we first focus on establishing emotional safety and strengthening people’s capacity to regulate anxiety. Traumatic symptoms are understood as the result of unprocessed emotional experiences held outside of awareness. Through careful, graded exposure to these emotions, clients can gradually integrate what was previously overwhelming. As emotional processing deepens, symptoms diminish, and clients often regain a sense of agency, resilience, and hope for lasting recovery.

In ISTDP, somatic and medically unexplained symptoms are seen as the result of unresolved emotional conflicts overwhelming the nervous system. When emotions like anger, fear, or grief are too threatening to experience consciously, they can be expressed through physical symptoms instead (tension headaches, fibromyalgia, fatigue, back pain to name a few). Therapy helps clients build emotional tolerance, regulate anxiety, and safely process underlying feelings. As the nervous system settles and emotional pathways reopen, physical symptoms often ease, restoring vitality, resilience, and a deeper sense of well-being.

Contrary to popular belief, burn-out isn’t a feeling (although there are physiological symptoms that co-occur with it), it is something we do to ourselves. Typically, it occurs when we have an un-conscious pattern of saying ‘yes’ to others, without stopping and asking ourselves whether we feel a ‘yes’ inside ourselves. If saying ‘yes’ to ourselves gets us anxious, then we won’t stop to consider what we want for ourselves, and instead habitually focus on others needs instead. This of course, is ‘burning out’. We help people connect with their own healthy desires, with less anxiety so that they can make decisions based on what enriches and energises, instead of avoiding anxiety or shame.

Long-standing relational difficulties are often linked to early interactions with our primary care-givers that. When important feelings like anger, sadness, or need were unsafe to express, protective patterns formed that now interfere with close relationships. Therapy helps clients recognize and work through these unconscious patterns, strengthening emotional resilience and the capacity for secure, authentic connection. As old unhelpful strategies soften, we help patients experience greater intimacy, self-confidence, and a more fulfilling emotional life.