Eduarda Mateus

I give consultations on Monday to Thursday.

If you wish to get in touch, I offer an initial brief consultation on Zoom, at no cost.

I offer a full 60-minute initial consultation session in person or online.

Please see below for further details.

Best,

Eduarda 

Reason alone is not enough to help overcome challenges in life experience. Lasting change can be experienced when the symptoms (e.g. anxiety, depression) have been well addressed and root issues appropriately processed. I specialise in the processing of e-motions, our "organic messengers" which inform how experience life. I elaborate further below.

About me

I am a BACP (Accredited) experienced counsellor and Emotion-Focused Therapist (Accredited), practising in my private consulting room in West End Edinburgh. I work with individual adults, in person and online.

Qualifications & Experience

Most relevant therapeutic qualifications:

- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitising and Reprocessing), with Dr Sandi Richman

- Diploma in Clinical Supervision from the Northern Guild for Psychotherapy & Counselling, Newcastle

- Emotion-Focused Therapy for Complex Trauma, with Dr Sandra Paivio

- Emotion-Focused Therapy for Individuals (Adults), with Dr Robert Elliot and Dr Lesley Greenberg

- Masters in Counselling (Person Centred and Psychodynamic), University of Edinburgh

Current Private Practice and previous experience:

I give consultations in my quiet, private consulting room in Edinburgh West End. I can see you in person and on Zoom, as it is most convenient to you.

Previous Services where I practised as a counselling therapist:

o Pastoral Foundation (PF)

o Edinburgh Rape Crices Centre (ERCC)

o CRUSE Bereavement Support

How the therapeutic process might unfold:

• I can offer an initial brief 20-30min consultation (free).

• Short-term therapy can be planned 4-12 sessions.

• Long-term therapy can have an unspecified number of sessions, but will include our regular reviews of the progress and, as necessary, adjusting the focus of the therapeutic work.

The initial consultations offer us quality opportunity to:

- Identify what we will be working on, and

- Develop our therapeutic alliance (therapeutic relationship)

Development in ongoing consultations:

- I encourage and may help you to notice how you feel in the moment, or have been experiencing (perhaps in build-up) before the session.

- I follow what you share and may help you identify what needs attention. This could call for a focus on the coherence / incoherence between body and mind (thoughts). Or you could feel some confusion due to pressure from too many themes, or a sense of lack of direction, unsure where to begin.

- Depending on what and how it is presented, I draw on the most appropriate therapeutic approach I can identify in the moment; we may go deeper into processing the energy you experience as we work by using emotion-focused therapeutic methods.

- When some experience leads to overwhelm or shut down, my priority is to bring you to a state of sense of safety in the consulting room with me.

- We work collaboratively with every experience you present, always reflecting on the process.

- Together, we identify what is important to follow up on.

- In some cases, we can identify whether Eye Movement Desensitising and Reprocessing would be a helpful resource to process some less accessible or blocked experiences.

60-minute session overview:

Check-in: Noticing where you are internally.

Development towards processing of experience: counselling and therapy

Process reflection: Noticing where you might have arrived by the end of the session.

When might therapy or a personal development process be helpful?

If you are noticing that life becomes too difficult to manage, challenging experiences become overwhelming, and your familiar ways of approaching these no longer seem to work, you are not alone. Old helpful responses and strategies are eventually experienced as unhelpful in the present.

Problems Develop when we habitually ignore our experiences, especially when we block unwanted feelings, as we then miss an opportunity to understand ourselves and find it harder to help ourselves. Emotions are ‘organic body messengers’ and such messages will not 'just go away'. E-motion is body energy in motion, signalling what we are experiencing (our reality) and what we need to do to adapt to the moment, such as finding safety.

When suppressed, emotions such as sadness, anger, shame, and guilt, even joy, build up within the body, awaiting opportunities to be released. Like air in a balloon, energy in the body might become too difficult to contain, easily triggered when 'pressed', and it can eventually be released with less self-control, often resulting in messy interactions.

In my therapeutic work, I am interested in my client’s growing self-understanding and related well-being. I promote your self-empowerment and autonomy, and we work collaboratively towards your fulness.

How might you notice that the therapeutic process is working?

Change in life experience is not as effective and long-lasting when just cognitively planned through behaviour strategies. Reason alone is not enough. Lasting change can be experienced when the symptoms have been addressed and root issues appropriately processed. For example, you may eventually notice you no longer experience the familiar disturbing symptoms in certain circumstances and your responses may come to feel more natural and adaptive to the current situations. 

Supportive supervision

I see supervision of other therapists both as a holding and professional space, where two therapists can collaborate in the wellbeing of clients.

I embody and may offer my knowledge and clinical experience as we work together. As it feels appropriate, I may also offer creative methods to help you explore deeper into your practice experience.

As we co-create opportunities to being reflexive and attentive to all the aspects of life that might inform the work with clients, we may notice where professional experiences meet with more personal ones. This is an opportunity for both personal and professional growth.

I value the importance of supervision in upholding ethical standards and good practice, and aim to openly talk about these with you.

My background

I originally trained in the dialogue between the psychodynamic and person-centred approaches, completing it with a Masters’ degree.

After gaining a few years of clinical practice experience in various charity services, including the more generic agency, PF, also Edinburgh Rape Crises Centre, CRUSE Bereavement Scotland, and Place2B, I then fully engaged in the post-qualifying and in-depth training in Emotion-Focused Therapy at Strathclyde with Dr Robert Elliot, then also in Salomons in Tunbridge Wells, with Dr Lesley Greenberg.

Later, I trained in Emotion-Focused Therapy for Complex Trauma with Dr Sandra Paivio.

I am now accredited in Emotion-Focused Therapy, which is a very long and video-evidence and graded competence-based assessment process.

I have been helping the EFT trainings at Strathclyde facilitating Skills Practice.

Opportunity for Extra-supervision

I completed my training in Clinical Supervision at Diploma level in Newcastle, at the Northern Guild for Psychotherapy and Counselling.

I have a couple more spaces for time-limited supervision at no cost with new supervisees, as I complete my hours to become fully qualified.

If you would like to get in touch with me, we can then arrange a meeting to explore both our suitability and potential availability to work together.