Dr. JM
PHD.
When I reached out to Sandra I’d recently submitted my PhD to the University of Oxford and I was trying to apply for jobs. I knew this should be a moment to be proud of myself, but I’d had an extremely difficult 18 months and I kept panicking and bursting into tears while trying to write the applications. A fortnight before I saw Sandra for the first time I wrote: “I feel so trampled on, I don’t even know how to make eye contact with people anymore. I don’t want to. I just want to be alone. I’ve never had this little direction and drive in my life. What’s the point of doing anything right now? I feel like to apply for jobs you need to sell yourself. And I don’t feel like I’ve got much to sell right now. I don’t know how you sell someone who’s broken.”
So I went into Sandra’s virtual clinic sad, anxious, and unsure of what to expect. I was scared I'd finally try to tame the anxiety, only to find that even professional help wouldn’t work for me. Luckily I needn’t have worried.
Sandra sussed me straight away. Instantly she realised that I needed a way to calm myself, so I had space to look at the things stressing me without feeling overwhelmed. She taught me techniques that actually worked for me and encouraged me to use them every day. I had gone in hoping for strategies that would help me feel less anxious in work environments. However Sandra said her goal was nothing short of ending my anxiety, And making me confident that nobody could make me feel anything I didn’t want to feel, within a matter of weeks. For someone who had suffered from anxiety since their early teens, that seemed a little far-fetched. But over six sessions Sandra led me through a wide range of exercises (that she’ll be able to explain much better than I can), and I’m pretty astounded to say that even though it’s only been 6 weeks, I think she’s right. Anxiety is so much less intimidating when I know I can feel calm if I want to. And now I’ve learnt to feel at peace with the memories and emotion that scared me most (and used to have so much control over me), it seems believable that I could have control over any emotion that threatened to overwhelm me. I’m excited about the freedom I now have. For the rest of my life, I’ll get to use all that energy that was sapped by my anxiety to do things I actually want to do! I’m so grateful to Sandra for this. She is compassionate, ambitious and very good at what she does. So if you’re considering doing this, talk to Sandra and tell her where you’re at. I can hand on heart say it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.
