Howard Widdicombe

I offer weekday appointments between 09.00 - 21.00 Monday - Friday inclusive. I do occasionally offer weekend appointments if you are not able to make weekday sessions or there is an emergency.

Hi! I'm Howard Widdicombe and many thanks for visiting my profile page.

 I have over 30 years experience as a Behavioural Psychologist, Psychotherapist and Counsellor. offering short and long term face to face and on line support from my Practice based in Woking Surrey. 

Making the most of ourselves and our lives by doing the best we can is a very basic motivational instinct we all recognize within ourselves. We have the potential to take charge of and influence our own lives. Most of the time we seem to do 'just fine' but occasionally experience ourselves as 'out of sorts' for a wide variety of reasons. We often seek  knowledge, information and insight as a way of resolving our dilemmas. However, they are frequently not sufficient to bring about the changes we seek in our internal personal experiences of ourselves and our external perspective about and behavioural responses to the situations and circumstances we encounter throughout our lives. If we could have thought our way out of the impact of adversity and traumatic experience we would have done so a long time ago!

Over the last 30 years, rigorous scientific and medical research together with advances in technology have made extraordinary discoveries about the fundamental natural neuro-biological processes that create our awareness and shape or responses to our own internal experiences and influences our perspective about our external environment  - in summary 'how' we function (learn and behave) as human beings. 

New, innovative and highly creative approaches have emerged which are providing us with a theoretical framework and practical methodology to explain and work with this perspective.

It is the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) that is the common denominator at the heart of our lived experience  - not our thinking and thought patterns. It is the universal process that 'animates' us all and gives us our internal sense of self and creates our perspective about our external situation and circumstances.  

If our ANS detects a threat,  it migrates away from a Parasympathetic Ventral Vagal 'state' of functional balance and equilibrium (a felt experience of safety and security) and migrates to an unregulated Sympathetic Nervous System 'fight/flight' agitated, anxious hyperactive 'state', or a withdrawal response 'state' which can, in turn, become a Parasympathetic Dorsal Vagal 'freeze' shutdown, unresponsive 'state'

My work is to support us to become aware of 'how' we unconsciously and habituatedly create the internal experiences we have of ourselves and the external perspective we have of the situations and circumstances we encounter throughout our lives. If they work for us  - "if it ain't broke don't fix it'!! However if we notice we are 'out of sorts' with ourselves and our lives, I use a variety of interactive  practical, somatic experience exercises  pioneered by Peter Levine, Deb Dana, Stephen Porges, Bessel van der Kolk, Stanley Keleman et al to enable us to become aware of and learn:-  

(a) 'HOW' we have developed the unconscious habituated patterns of feelings, sensations, thoughts and behavioural responses that are not working for us and have contributed to our current level of dissatisfaction

(b) 'HOW' to influence, regulate and differentiate these outdated neuro-biological response patterns

This process enables us to create a more personally satisfying and fulfilling internal experience of ourselves and an improved external capacity to respond appropriately to those situations and circumstances we encounter throughout our lives that are not currently working for us.

Please visit my website (www.howardwiddicombe.co.uk) for a more detailed explanation

Our first session together is an opportunity to get to know each other - for you to ask me any puzzles or questions you have about me, my training, professional background and experience, the way I work etc, and enables me to listen to you to understand what brings you to work with me and what you would like to achieve from our time together. 

This session normally lasts for an hour.