Bod Cantwell
By the time people come to therapy, they’ve often spent months or even years trying to understand what’s happening, searching for answers or simply trying to cope. My role isn’t simply to listen. It’s to help you understand what’s happening, why it keeps happening and, drawing on more than 15 years of clinical experience and training across several evidence-based therapies, decide what is most likely to help you move forward.
People often worry about what they’re going to say in their first session. Please don’t. That’s my job. You don’t need to prepare or have everything worked out beforehand. My first priority is helping you feel comfortable and at ease. From there, I’ll guide the conversation, get to know you, understand what has brought you to therapy and begin identifying the patterns that may be keeping you stuck. Together we’ll develop a clear understanding of what’s going on and agree a plan that feels right for you.
My professional training includes Integrative Psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), Schema Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and couples therapy. Alongside my clinical practice, I am completing a PhD at the University of Sheffield researching emotional regulation in adults with ADHD, allowing me to integrate established therapeutic approaches with current psychological and neuroscientific research.
I work with adults experiencing a wide range of psychological and relationship difficulties, including anxiety, depression, OCD, trauma, PTSD, ADHD, low self-esteem, relationship difficulties, emotional dysregulation and the lasting effects of difficult life experiences. I have a particular interest in understanding how our nervous system responds to perceived threat and how this can contribute to anxiety, avoidance, perfectionism, shame, people-pleasing, emotional shutdown and recurring relationship patterns. Although my training is broad, I don’t believe people should be fitted into one model of therapy.
Some difficulties respond best to structured behavioural interventions, while others require us to understand attachment, trauma, longstanding beliefs or the ways we have learned to protect ourselves. Rather than following a fixed formula, I tailor therapy to the individual, drawing on the approaches most likely to help your particular circumstances. People often tell me they feel comfortable with me surprisingly quickly. I believe the therapeutic relationship is the foundation of good therapy, but warmth alone is rarely enough to create lasting change. My aim is to combine a friendly, collaborative approach with thoughtful formulation, evidence-based practice and practical interventions that help you make meaningful progress.
Whether this is your first experience of therapy or you’ve had therapy before, my goal is the same: to help you feel genuinely understood, make sense of what has been happening and support you in creating lasting change. I don’t expect you to fit a particular therapeutic model. Instead, I believe therapy should be built around you.
Online and/or telephone appointments are available.
