Nicky Bainbrigge Psychotherapy & Counselling in Walthamstow trust hope growth

Attachment-based Therapy in E17

Psychotherapy with me

I am a UKCP-registered attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist. I have  twenty years experience working as an attachment-based psychotherapist in Walthamstow, North East London with adults in individual one-to-one therapy. I have an  intergative approach seeing a wide range of people with a special interest in those who work in creative industries and in the corporate sphere, understanding workplace attachments and dynamics, bullying, climate anxiety, friendship and sibling attachments, post-cancer support, menopause and midlife and those who struggle with decision-making particularly at a big junction in their life.  I am also a supervisor, teacher, lecturer and training therapist. I offer therapy face-to-face in person at my practice or on the telephone and via encrypted video-conferencing facilities. My fees range from £75 to £95 per session depending on frequency of therapy.. Some of the areas in which I have worked in the past are listed below. 

Some of the areas I work with (although not exhaustive):

Understanding how attachment issues affect your life now and in the past
Stresses with parents and primary caregivers both today and in your past
Coping with anxiety, stress and phobias
Conflict at work, bullying at work and historical bullying

Menopause and midlife issues
Fertility issues 
Feeling 'stuck', not knowing how to move forward
Lack of confidence and shame
Romantic relationships, sexuality and gender fluidity
Sibling relationships
Friendships
Blind spots and unhelpful repeating patterns in your life
Support going though cancer treatment from diagnosis to post treatment 
Health anxiety
Historical school trauma and stress 
Neurodiversity
Old age and death anxiety

Wisdom from the Consulting Room.

Here is a wee place I will share a few thoughts and musings along various themes from my time spent with all those couragerous souls I meet everyday in my consulting room. I hope you too may find some of these thoughts and reflections helpful and if you wish to think about these ideas further please do not hesitate to get in touch. 

Dare To Be Ordinary – Reflections on Being Stuck

Here I am attempting to muse on feeling stuck and I am, you guessed it, feeling stuck. Where to begin, I wonder? How about I come up with all the different ways we can find ourselves stuck? If we are creatures of habit, we can be stuck in our ways, if we are considered lacking in a sense of fun, we can be accused of being a ‘stick-in-the mud’ or if we find ourselves divided in our loyalties, we can find ourselves stuck in the middle of an argument. If we are fiercely loyal we can be stuck fast to an idea or argument or worse still, if we get too big for our boots, we could be accused of being ‘Stuck up!” I hate feeling stuck in a rut, I love to stick around if there’s fun to be had but most of all I would never wish to come to - heaven forbid - a sticky end. So, you see there are all sorts of ways we can get sticky, if you’ll beg my pardon but enough of that. I’m going to linger a bit longer on a particular type of stuck, a particularly pernicious sort.

What I am talking about is the treacly feeling-like-you-are-wading-through mud sort of stuck where you just cannot get motivated to do anything and when you do just about make a start, it is immediately discarded for being rubbish, lame or just too much like hard work. Let me share a personal example – violin practice. I refer back to my childhood here as I have not picked up my violin in years, sad to say. Here I am, it is 1985 and in my mind’s eye I am Nicola Benedetti (Yes, I know she wasn’t born then but poetic license please!) I’m holding my violin aloft, the sweet harmonious notes wending their way down my street. Scratch record. No. When bow hits string I am quickly catapulted out of said fantasy and reminded I am Nicola Bainbrigge emitting sounds that more closely resemble a cat in some otherworldy form of agony. Or a limp wailing child with the slower largo numbers. My poor neighbours. Fortunately the relationship we had with our neighbours during my childhood was pretty darned marvellous and strong enough to sustain my violin playing, which is saying something. They were a patient sort, solid and unwavering in their neighbourly kindness, something I occasionally reflect on with humble gratitude.

So what I wonder is this: I want to sound like Nicola Benedetti but perhaps I am just too lazy to put in the effort to be that good? They do say it’s 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration after all. They say the only way to become accomplished at anything is through jolly hard work. Blood, sweat and tears. Practice, practice, practice. I know, I know, I know.

Is it really that simple that talent and hard work are the only factors in mastery? Is it really simply down to militant unwavering endeavour? This feels a little like telling an overweight person just to eat less and exercise more. This feels too simple and too depressing a prospect.

Instead I contemplate the ways in which we struggle to motivate ourselves and the first thought that comes to mind beyond the heavy-treacly sensation in the body is a narcissistic and somewhat deluded disappointment that I cannot immediately produce the brilliance I have in my head. Who could? This is a ridiculous notion. How on earth could I sound like Nicola Benedetti with minimal levels of practice? Having to reconcile this delusional disappointment and take my upset inner child in hand was and is a very important internal process. It is with great sadness and grief that I face my own limits, recognise I cannot magic brilliance out of thin air at will and garner a huge round of applause, just because. Even if I could is there not something to be said for daring to be ordinary? Maybe this is a step too far, to face ones’ own ordinariness: for are we not then called upon to face our own mortality in all its ordinariness? What is it to be both. Flawed and lovely all at the same time. Loveable and rubbish at stuff all at the same time too. An important reconciliation to make with oneself at some point in ones’ adult life – hopefully sooner rather than later. Perhaps it is this humility that makes us both ordinary and extraordinary all at the same time.

Now back to my violin practice. I remember on the rare occasions I practiced my violin as a child I would sometimes whack the violin bow on the bed in frustration at not being to play a particular stanza perfectly. Once the frustration was out my system, I was able to return to the piece with a renewed sense of peace thus enabling me to give it another try. Which brings me to an appropriate juncture to introduce the F-word. Not that F word, if you please!. The F-word I am referring to is frustration, or the tolerance of suchlike. I believe that one of the key barriers to mastering anything is the inability to tolerate frustration. We are hard wired to feel frustration. It is our life force. It is literally what gets us up on our two feet. You watch any toddler who wants to explore the exciting shiny thing over on the other side of the room. If they desperately want to suss out what is going on far away out of reach it will be frustration that pushes them up with all their might onto their two plump little legs. Suddenly wow a whole new world opens up to them. It is nothing short of miraculous really when you think about it and this never leaves us until the day we die. It is frustration that drives us forward and precipitates change, not comfort. We do not change when the going is good, we change when we are sufficiently sick-fed up with how things are. 

So, have I not been frustrated enough to make changes and release myself of this dull torpor? Will this forever be my fate? Is this it, said like a true middle-aged person? To answer this I must bring in another aspect of being stuck which involves being locked down literally and metaphorically. During the first eighteen months of lockdown, I now know the creative part of me locked down with it, taking a large chunk of my creative energy too. This is perhaps unsurprising in a pandemic where the enemy is invisible, out of control, unpredictable and deadly. I am sure I am not alone in failing to learn a language, build a multi-million- pound entrepreneurial empire, hone my body into a svelte reincarnation courtesy of Joe Wickes and rustle up a banana bread loaf in my spare time. There were souls here on earth who felt depressed, ‘treacly’, weary, burned out, lethargic and of course, stuck.

If you are feeling a similar way and you can identify with any of this then know you are not alone and there are others out there just like you, all in their own little bottle-necked dungeon wondering how on earth to escape. Perhaps we could all do with trying to find some small fragment of frustration or desire within us and allow ourselves to feel it, not push it away. Let’s try to connect to it and experience the sadness that may accompany this frustration too. After all, if we have been locked up inside for a time, however long, it would be unusual if we did not feel some sadness, surely. Then maybe just maybe some creative energy can push its way through and propel us forward.

If this does happen to you, then forget banana bread - make elephant burgers! Not from real elephants, silly! Break the monolith you have been procrastinating down into small doable steps, take a deep breath and begin. Just begin. Do not think about it, analyse it, do not talk yourself out of it, do not say you are not clever/fit/talented enough. Do none of those things. Just begin, do something, anything, and see where it takes you. You never know. Good luck!

If you are interested in counselling and psychotherapy contact me on 0208 509 2849.

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