Thea Martin

You may have arrived here knowing precisely what you want to work on, or maybe you know that something isn’t sitting right. Perhaps it’s a restlessness you can’t account for, a pattern that keeps repeating, a level of worry that has become so familiar you’ve stopped questioning it. I’m Thea, a UKCP-registered, trauma-informed psychotherapist specialising in anxiety, working in person in Battersea and Putney and online across the UK. Anxiety is rarely just anxiety. It tends to have a history, and it tends to be doing a job. That could be protecting you from something, or bracing you against something that once happened and might happen again. That’s why it can persist long after you’ve understood it perfectly well, and why advice to relax or think more positively so often falls flat. Understanding is not the same as feeling different.

UKCP, BSc (Hons), ADHP(NC), CHP(NC), CNHC, NSTT, NCH

It could be that you experience a constant, low hum of worry, or something more defined like panic attacks, social anxiety, health anxiety or the exhausting work of managing uncertainty. It may also be the result of trauma, whether that’s a single event or something that went on for a long time, including PTSD and CPTSD.

I specialise in anxiety-based issues and understand that anxiety doesn’t always arrive under its own name. It often shows up as perfectionism, people-pleasing, insomnia, procrastination and difficulty holding boundaries, negative self-talk, physical symptoms with no clear medical cause, or a habit that won’t shift however much you want it to. It’s often what’s left behind after a relationship that’s eroded your sense of yourself. Working only with the outward behaviour tends not to hold. Working with what sits underneath it usually does.

How I work

Therapy is a relationship before it’s a technique, and how it feels to sit with someone matters. My approach is person-centred which means you set the direction, we go at your pace, and you won’t need to talk about anything you’re not ready to.

I trained integratively, which gives me a palette of approaches to draw on rather than a single model applied to everyone. This includes Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Internal Family Systems (I’m IFS-informed), Polyvagal Theory, Havening Techniques®, Eye Movement Reconsolidation and clinical hypnosis. Some of that’s talking therapy, some works more directly with how experience is held in the body, which can be useful when talking alone hasn’t reached it. That’s because anxiety doesn’t live in the thinking part of the brain. It lives in a nervous system that learned, often a long time ago, that it needed to stay alert. Insight alone rarely reaches it. What we use, and when, is something we decide together as we go.

Anxiety, stress and trauma show up physically as well as mentally. In our sleep, our digestion, in a chest that won’t loosen. Learning to notice and work with that connection can shift things that thinking about them cannot.

Work can be short-term and focused, or longer-term, depending on what you need.

A little about me

Before training as a psychotherapist, I spent over two decades in the entertainment industry representing a roster of successful creatives. It gave me a close view of lives lived under scrutiny. The pressure of visibility, the exposure of putting your work into the world and waiting to hear what people make of it, and the particular strain of work that comes in bursts with no guarantee of the next one. When what you do and who you are becomes difficult to separate, a professional setback can feel like a verdict on your worth.

Getting started

Reaching out takes courage, and choosing the right therapist matters, the fit between you and the person you work with is a large part of what makes therapy effective. I offer a free 20-minute call with no obligation, so you can ask questions, hear how I work, and get a sense of whether I’m the right person for you.