About Pippa
My name is Pippa. I'm a qualified integrative therapist working in Exeter, Devon. I also offer online sessions, as this is enables me to work with clients based anywhere in the UK.
Having had a lot of therapy myself over the years to help me overcome my own experiences of trauma, I've come across both brilliant and inexperienced or indifferent counsellors. I often came away feeling even more misunderstood and unheard than before.
I understand how important it is to find a therapist who really seeks to understand and help you find your voice and sense of meaning and purpose.
Compassionate connection is at the heart of my practice as is, I believe, what makes an effective the therapeutic relationship. Being able to sit with your therapist and feel a sense of relief and release that you can talk freely to them, means that your nervous system can experience feeling safe - perhaps for the first time, for many people.
That profound feeling of being fully heard and understood is the key to processing whatever it is that has brought you to therapy.
Most of my clients have experienced trauma in some form - perhaps from childhood adversity or from an abusive or coercive relationship. Working somatically as well as through attentive listening to shift stored trauma means that it's not always necessary to talk about a painful experience - something which can be the source of further anxiety or distress.
My training as an integrative counsellor allows me to draw on a variety of skills and theories which I feel will most support you with what you bring to each session. I may bring attachment theory, inner child work, nervous system regulation and Transactional Analysis into therapy sessions.
I'm a passionate advocate of Polyvagal theory: clients say it's empowering to understand their nervous system's responses to triggering situations - flight, fight, freeze, flop or fawn (people-pleasing) - to help alleviate shame and distress. I'd be happy to use and explain any of these theories and approaches in as much detail as you want in our sessions.
Some of my favourite things to keep me feeling connected and experiencing 'glimmers' are music, reading, tennis, laughing with friends, singing in the car and being out in nature.
You can often find me reading or listening to podcasts with brilliant therapists like Dr Abi Blakelsee, Gabor Maté, Esther Perel, Stephen Porges and Peter Levine. The book pile I'm currently working through is a heady mix of mythology, psychology, spirituality and contemporary fiction.
