Is Motherhood Feeling More Challenging Than You Hoped For?
- Feeling overwhelmed with stress, anxiety or feeling the need to be perfect
- Feeling low, depressed, or unconfident
- Finding that a difficult or traumatic birth experience is still impacting you
- Grieving after a miscarriage or baby loss
- Having difficulty managing emotions such as anger and sadness
- Experiencing challenges in your relationships
- Finding previous life challenges, including childhood experiences, resurfacing
- Having intrusive and distressing thoughts, including thoughts about harming your baby
- Struggling to adjust to your new identity, life, or body
These are all common challenges that mums experience. Motherhood is a time of transitions and increasing demands. Your identity and relationships may be changing, while at the same time, you have more demands than ever and the things that once helped you cope might no longer feel accessible.
Struggling is not a reflection of how much you love your child or how good a mother you are. It simply means you’re going through an intense period of life and may need some extra support to help you navigate the challenges and changes that come with this chapter.
It can be scary and isolating to be experiencing these challenges but therapy can help you to overcome them.
Therapy can help you to…
- Feel more confident as a mum by learning to turn down your inner critical voice
- Feel more grounded and in control by gaining tools to manage overwhelming stress, anxiety, and emotions
- Rediscover joy in motherhood by gently challenging unhelpful thoughts and behaviour patterns
- Improve your relationships by understanding how past experiences influence your current relationship patterns
- Find space to grieve after miscarriage or baby loss in an understanding and compassionate environment
- Begin to heal after a traumatic birth by being supported to process what happened
- Grow into your new identity and life as a parent and make self-aware decisions that feel right for you
- Remove distress from intrusive thoughts and no longer feel compelled to do compulsive behaviours
- Be more present in motherhood by having space to process and move forward from past challenges
How I work
At the heart of how I work is providing a non-judgemental, compassionate space where you feel heard, understood, and supported.
I draw upon my training in a range of evidence-based approaches—including person-centred therapy, CBT, and compassion-focused therapy—so our work together can be shaped around what best suits your situation and preferences.
In our first session, there is an opportunity for us to discuss your situation and goals in more detail. From here, I can draw upon my training and experience to suggest ways we might work together, and you can choose the path that feels most supportive.
I can also share my specialist knowledge of maternal mental health to help you make sense of your experience so you feel more understood and less alone.
You’ll never be asked to share more than you’re ready for and you don’t need to be at breaking point to benefit from therapy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Everything we discuss in our sessions remains entirely confidential. The only exception to this would be if I had a serious concern about yours or somebody else’s safety and we were not able to find a way together to ensure safety without confidentiality being broken. I am also legally obliged to release client notes if ordered by a judge or coroner.
This can vary depending on your situation and aims for therapy. We can discuss this question further during an introduction call.
I am able to accommodate any length of therapy within my practice so if you are only able to have a certain number of sessions, please let me know at the start of our work together and we can discuss and plan for what is realistic to approach and aim to achieve in this time.
This is a common concern. Many people reach out to therapy as they just have a general sense that something is not right or as it should be. As a therapist, I am trained to listen and ask questions in a way which helps you to explore and better understand your challenges.