Craig Coventry - Profile

Making the decision to enter counselling or psychotherapy can often be a tough decision to make. I take a non-pathologizing approach to psychological well being and see clients as people experiencing normal reactions to difficult and often abnormal situations. Whichever difficulty you find yourself grappling with, you do not have to face it alone.

My approach is primarily Humanistic and integrative with elements of DBT, Mindfulness, CBT, and Psychodynamic therapy. I also offer EMDR therapy.

What this means in practice, is that my way of working involves seeing therapy as a journey of self-exploration and healing, and that my job is not to direct the process per se, but to help deepen your exploration by being with you in your journey, and highlighting any possible avenues that may be relevant based on my experience, knowledge, therapeutic theory and felt sense. Through this process, and through gaining a deeper insight and connection with yourself, you are then able to start to heal and navigate yourself though your difficulties in the best way for you.

Integration of other approaches and techniques is used for purposes of management and stabilisation, to bring clients back to a position of regulation where change and healing is then possible.

I offer a 4-stage process for working with traumatic symptoms and experiences:

• Safety- emotional regulation, resilience, grounding and self-soothing techniques.
• Processing Trauma- whilst using techniques learned above to remain present and regulated. Processing the trauma does not necessarily mean talking about every detail. Some people find it helpful but it is not a requirement; some people often find it damaging. Therefore, for some people the aim is coming to terms with and overcoming the trauma in an emotional, cognitive and physiological sense (anxiety and other somatic symptoms).
• Mourning and loss- working through the loss of trauma. Whether it be the loss of a person, a limb, the life one should have had, the person who a significant other should have been, the loss of a sense of self.
• Integration- bringing it all together and living a life which is not restricted through traumatic memories and bringing traumatic growth into daily life.

This process is not necessarily linear, as stages can be returned to in different orders. What is important is that the techniques for resilience and grounding learned in stage one have been practiced successfully before moving onto processing/ coming to terms with traumatic memories.

I initially gained experience through working as a college counsellor alongside working as a counsellor for adults within a local charity. Since then, I have gained my experience through my private practices in Surrey and Central London before expanding into Guildford and now most of my work is based in private practice in Surrey.

I have worked with clients with both short-term and long-term agreements. Now, I primarily work in an open-ended manner (no set length of time) and trust the client’s judgement in the length of therapy required.

As a trauma therapist, approximately a third of my work is based on working with traumatic experiences such as sexual/physical/domestic abuse, PTSD, accidents, neglect and resulting disorders such as BPD and DID. The rest of my work is focused around more generic difficulties such as: depression, anxiety, addiction, anger and difficult stages of life.

Professional Membership:

• BACP
• UK Psychological Trauma Society
• European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies