Chris Dudgeon

Purchase Online Session Purchase 4-Session Package — Individual

Registered & Accredited Counsellor specialising in depth therapy for trauma

Languages: English.

Availability: Online sessions.

Contact Chris Dudgeon HERE for a free online 20-minute introduction appointment.

Do you want to break free from the shadow of trauma?

I am a qualified, registered counsellor offering depth counselling for trauma, addiction and the search for meaning.

Overcoming the effects of trauma is about making our body and our life a safe place to be again. The effects of trauma which I work most often with are:

• Substance dependency
• Problematic ways of coping, such as pornography use, gambling or gaming
• Severe anxieties such as attacks of panic, intrusive thoughts and social anxiety
• Compulsive intimacy, emotional distance and other relational difficulties
• Persistent low mood and feelings of depression
• Low self-esteem, body image and distressed eating
• Other ways of thinking or behaving that have taken hold

Much of this began, at some point, as a way to get through something, so I am less interested in judging it than in understanding it.

People often ask what I am like to sit with. I am warm, and I am direct. I will not rush you, and I will not fill a silence for the sake of it. Much of the time we go slowly, at a pace your body can bear, because trauma does not respond well to being hurried. People often say the hardest thing out loud, then look up to check my face, and it is still just me, still listening. You will not have to make yourself smaller, or edit yourself, to be met here.

How I work
However you arrive, we begin there, and move at your pace. I do not work from a fixed script. I draw on several approaches and adapt them to you.

Finding some ground. When everything feels like too much, the first work is often simply to find some ground. For this I draw on well-researched approaches, including cognitive, mindfulness-based and body-focused (somatic) work, which can help you settle anxiety, steady a craving, or find some footing when distress feels overwhelming.

Making sense of your story. As things settle, we make sense of how they came to be. This is where narrative therapy comes in, beginning from the idea that you are the expert on your own life, not me. Often the problem you are wrestling with is not you; it is something that has taken up residence, and it can be faced.

Working gently with trauma. Trauma sits underneath a great deal of what brings people to me, so it shapes how I work throughout. When you are ready, we can turn towards the harder memories, and the feelings tangled up with them, at a pace your body can bear, paying as much attention to what happens in the body as in the mind.

Going deeper, when you are ready. For some people the work goes further than easing the symptom, into questions of meaning, identity and how you want to live. This is deeper, more reflective work, never rushed and not for everyone, but for those who want it, it is where the deepest change tends to happen.

Difference is welcome here
Trauma and distress can enter anyone’s life. Some of us, though, carry more of it and find less support waiting, often because of who we are or how the world has treated us. In my room, you will not have to explain or defend your identity, your background or your relationships.

Whoever you are, you will be met with respect and without judgement. I stay aware of my own position and of the ways difference can play out in therapy, so that the work stays about you.

Lived experience
Born and raised in Scotland, I am a gay man in my fifties, living and working in London. If it matters to you to work with someone who understands difference from the inside, that is part of what I bring.

Before I trained as a counsellor, I spent twenty years in professional services across the UK, Australia and Asia, which gives my practice both depth and a wide sense of the lives people lead.

Professional registrations

• Hong Kong: Greater Bay Psychology & Counselling Association and Hong Kong Professional Counselling Association
• Australia: Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia
• United Kingdom: National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society and Addiction Professionals Registration Body & Network

Qualifications and training

• Master of Counselling, Monash University
• Master of Narrative Therapy, University of Melbourne
• One-year Trauma Recovery training, the Dulwich Centre
• Currently in advanced training in transpersonal and Jungian depth-oriented psychotherapy

Languages and sessions
I offer online counselling in English to individual adults across Asia-Pacific. New clients are welcome to a complimentary 20-minute introductory consultation, a chance to tell me a little about what is going on and to get a feel for whether we might work well together.

Purchase Online Session Purchase 4-Session Package — Individual