• BA(Hons)
• Post Grad Dip in Core Process Psychotherapy
• SEP- Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

• United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) Registered Member

Anna grew up in Cheshire, did a degree in English at Durham University, taught English in secondary schools in London and in Somerset, and eventually undertook the psychotherapy training at the Karuna Institute in Devon. She has two grown up children. She has been seeing clients since 2005. When the Somatic Experiencing training first came to England Anna was in the first cohort to train.

As a psychotherapist she works to resolve depression, anxiety, trauma and stress and to increase well-being and the quality of people’s relationships. She works with whatever the client brings, with no attempt to fit a person to a theory. Core Process is a body-based psychotherapy: an approach that pays attention to physical sensations as part of the communication between client and therapist. The development of the Core Process Psychotherapy training is based on a Buddhist understanding of the human condition, which sees mind and body as inextricably linked, and on Buddhist practices such as the importance of extending loving-kindness to ourselves as well as to others.

Somatic Experiencing, also known as SE, arose from the work of Peter Levine, author of ‘Waking the Tiger’ and there are many overlaps between SE and Core Process Psychotherapy. SE takes as its starting point that trauma is held, and can be healed, in the body. Anna works mostly as a psychotherapist, with her SE skills enhancing her psychotherapy training, and much of her work concerns emotional distress resulting from our experiences. By contrast some more recent adult traumas, such as Road Traffic Accident, that are not about our early development, can be approached in specific SE sessions to bring about regulation of the nervous system and to help the client move on from the traumatic incident. In both cases Anna works with the client to release trauma as it is held in the body using the approach of the client being encouraged to become aware of body sensation as well as through discussion with the therapist.

Anna’s special area of interest is in childhood trauma such as emotional, physical and sexual abuse. As little beings we are vulnerable to deficiencies or hostilities in the environment, and if our needs for safety, recognition, and acceptance are not met, we build defenses which may serve us at the time, but which may limit us in later life. We can access these difficulties through working with the body, and allow the defended personality structures to soften, giving us the opportunity to realise our true potential and live freer lives. Absolute respect for clients is vital, and it is possible to work at a subtle level without the client having to re-tell the most difficult parts of their story: it is of paramount importance that we avoid re- traumatising. Anna is developing her interest in how we are affected by our time in the womb and by our births, and how we hold the body memory of these events. In all of these areas the talking can be supplemented by working imaginatively and intuitively, for example by introducing an element of movement.

Please call or email Anna to book: 07828 641334 / annacolgan@hotmail.com. You can refer to her website for further details: www.annacolgan.co.uk