Rachel Hendron

I am a Person-Centred, Focusing-oriented Therapist and Trainer, working with therapists who want to bring a more somatic, trauma informed and felt-sense exploration to their practice. I have completed with distinction an advanced diploma in Counselling Supervision  and am a NCIP Accredited Supervisor.

I am trained in Brainspotting and Deep Brain Reorientation which are somatic trauma processing methodologies and have a great deal of experience resourcing and preparing clients for this work as well as guiding them in sessions as they work with nervous system disregulation and dissociative experiences. These approaches are gentle, effective and give the client a lot of control and understanding so they can learn to navigate their experience as well as process and shift out of it. I am a Focusing trainer and I find being able to teach and share Focusing (working with the felt sense) a very useful starting place for working with trauma, disassociation, anxiety, depression and shock.

I have experience working with clients and practitioners on the autistic spectrum and how this can relate and combine with trauma and how it can show up with gendered differences and how it affects families and partners. I am interested in a systemic approaches which can help us navigate the realities of our own and our clients  developmental trauma as well as the current societal, ecological and existential urgency of the times we live in.

I am drawn to working through an Ecopsychological / Animist / Indigenous lens and exploring the Transpersonal as well as Intrapersonal and the felt sense of relationships we have with our clients to be effective therapists. I am cohosting the International Focusing Conference this year as well as an unperson Ecopsychology gathering through Edge of the Wild and a member of the Institute of Psychedelic Therapy and interested in how we help clients prepare for and integrate spiritual experiences, experiences with psychedelics, dream and breathwork.

I am interested in working with therapists either for a single or short session of consultations to help therapists who want to work in a more embodied, relationally attended, trauma informed or expansive way as well as ongoing Supervision as a requirement of Ethical Frameworks and developing our practice.

I use a Focusing approach to Supervision where our relationship is the primary way of learning about ourselves and how we connect with parts of ourself, each other and our setting. So while addressing client wellbeing, ethical dilemmas, self care and making sure we are working within our capacity Focusing Supervision is also about learning to use our felt sense as people and practitioners to become ever clearer about our sense of ourselves in relationship, our strengths, capacities, motivations, needs and our areas of resistance and difficulty. 

I am happy to share my knowledge of helping clients and ourselves stay within our Window of Tolerance, to be grounded, competent, safe practitioners and to know what is our material and to ourselves to know what is useful to clients and what isn't. I am happy to share information on how I have learnt to work with clients who have ASD, ADHD and other neurological differences, are living with pain or have PTSD and trauma, to help clients and also to help practitioners avoid vicarious trauma, overwhelm, burn-out and becoming either too detached or to involved. 

Working somatically helps us both maintain and adjust boundaries and therefore be the relationship that helps.

I am a volunteer with The International Focusing Institute, helping to organise and run events such as their conferences, the Gendlin Symposium and Round Tables and hope to work with other Focusing Therapists to develop an understanding of supervision from a Gendlinian Philosophical stance.

I am very happy for us to have a 15 min call to discuss anything you want to check with me before we meet. I am mainly available online, though I am interested in exploring how it might be to take the psychotherapeutic approach outdoors, either online and outdoors if that is available to you or in person around the water meadows of Winchester.

I accept AXA and Aviva insurance.

Relational, Experiential Psychotherapy

People often come to see me when the solutions that usually work aren't helping; they notice they are stuck with behaviours, thought patterns, or relationship difficulties that they haven't been able to resolve. When our usual coping mechanisms aren't working, or we feel that things are getting worse, it's time for a new approach, and that's what I offer.

Rather than ruminating over the same old worries and constraints, we work gently, using the body's 'felt sense' and, where appropriate, specific grounding techniques while exploring difficult experiences. As 'stuckness' or neurobiological trauma is located in the body, things begin to change when we invite information from our experience to help clear what keeps us stuck, to what lies beyond the 'foggy', depressed, fearful or anxious states we habitually live in.

I am trained in Person-Centred listening; in our sessions, you will choose the pace of our work, allowing you to stay safely grounded no matter your experiences. Together, we can notice the patterns in your family system, lived experiences and neurobiology, allowing us to discover what is at the edge of your experience. I am a Focusing-Oriented Therapist and Trainer and am trained in Systemic Constellations. I am trained in Deep Brain Reorienting and Brainspotting, two modalities which help us to work with Derealisation and Disassociation, which are often present in people who have experienced trauma. We can work through experiences of fight, flight and nervous system collapse and learn how to feel safe in our bodies again. 

I also work with therapists, artists, teachers, and writers who wish to develop and deepen their work.  We can explore dreams and ideas for future projects and where work is 'stuck' and needs attention. We can use therapy sessions to find our grounding and recover from wounds while exploring new possibilities.

I work exclusively online, providing you have a private space to speak; this means you can take advantage of being in your own cosy space with, perhaps, a pet, photo or artwork, blanket or a cup of tea. You do not have to navigate your journey to or from the session, and at the end of the session, you are already in your own space to nap, make a snack, go for a walk, journal or make some art. This enables you to integrate the work we do immediately. As we are using embodied practices, we want to give the work time to settle, and you will get the most out of it when you can find a time to meet where you do not need to rush straight after the session. 

Somatic practices such as Deep Brain Reorienting, Brainspotting, Focusing and Systemic Constellations work particularly well online, and I have studied them with teachers and therapists who work online. If you are working on Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and have disassociation or derealisation, it is safer for you not to be driving to or from these sessions when things get stirred up; we will do our very best in a session to stay grounded and being in your own space can help with this.

I offer 90-minute stand-alone sessions for people who want to try this work to see if it is an experience that can help them. In a 90-minute session, we have time to explore the situation and deepen your experience around a particular difficulty. 

For people who are struggling with an addiction, CPTSD, social anxiety or depression and want to break a strong habit, I would suggest we have a series of weekly 60-minute sessions so you can notice your habitual pattern and find a way to a new one. Like anything new, some focused effort is required, but this isn't simply telling yourself how you 'should' be but finding a new way to experience more of what you need, which habitual behaviour is an attempt to address. After a while, you might find meeting fortnightly gives you the support you need.

Our first session will be guided by what you, your therapy experience, what you are hoping for, and how resourced you feel. I am ready to help you take the first steps or welcome you to take your space. 

Possibilities include telling your story, asking questions and setting your boundaries, mapping your family or relevant experiences about an issue, learning how to be guided by your felt sense using modalities such as Brainspotting or DBR to process trauma and manage disassociation and always accessing your resources while feeling the weight of what you are struggling with.

I am very interested to hear your story and what barriers you might feel to living the life you long for; I am also able to work with clients who do not want to share details but to have a place to have company and safety as they sit with the harrowing experiences and process them somatically. It might help to know you can work with traumatic experiences and creative dreams which you do not want or cannot articulate. I work with people who have experienced abuse from family members, intimate partners, individuals they once trusted and groups such as schools, workplaces, religious communities, and in social settings. Your experiences are welcome and will be respected and believed, and if you struggle to remember what happened to you but know something did, that is also fine, and we can work with it, too. You don't have to worry about being 'ready' for your first session, this is part of our work together.

There are always surprises when working with the body, especially when we move slowly and carefully. Our systems want to relax, heal and evolve, together we find ways to do this.

I can help you consider if prescribed drugs (antidepressants, antipsychotics, etc.), in addition to therapy, will be valuable to you and to work with ongoing prescribed drug dependence and, should you wish, to work with you towards a planned withdrawal, in assistance with your prescriber (GP or Psychiatrist).