When Therapy Hasn’t Quite Worked Before

Many of the people who contact me have already been in therapy before.

They are intelligent, reflective, and capable. They understand their patterns. They can explain their history. And yet something still feels unresolved.

Often the issue is not insight. It is capacity.

Insight can help us understand why we feel the way we do. Capacity determines whether we can stay with those feelings without becoming overwhelmed, detached, or shut down.

In longer-term trauma or early relational wounds, the nervous system often learned to survive by managing intensity rather than processing it. This can mean therapy becomes a place of discussion rather than integration.

Depth work requires pacing. It requires attention not only to what is said, but to what happens in the body, in silence, and in moments of discomfort. It also requires a steady therapeutic relationship that does not rush towards catharsis or quick solutions.

For some people, previous therapy was helpful but stayed at the level of coping. For others, it moved too quickly into material that the system was not yet ready to process.

Therapy does not need to be dramatic to be effective. Often, the most meaningful shifts occur gradually, as regulation increases and the system learns that difficult emotions can be experienced without collapse.

If you have tried therapy before and feel that something important remains unfinished, it may not be that therapy “failed”. It may be that the approach or pacing did not match what you needed at the time.

I offer depth-oriented, trauma-informed psychotherapy for adults seeking steady, contained work. Sessions are available online and in London.