Priscila Moura

I curently have spaces available.

I think of therapy as a place to become more fluent in yourself.

Much of what we feel was learned long before we had words for it, in our earliest relationships and in the ways our bodies learned to find safety. When that learning no longer fits the life we're living, it can cause distress, which shows up as anxiety, depression, numbness, or a sense of being strangers to ourselves. My work is to help you listen to what those experiences have been saying, and to find out what they might need now.

I'm an integrative therapist, and my thinking is rooted in object relations and attachment theory, which help us understand how early bonds shape the way we love, protect ourselves and expect others to treat us. Alongside this, I draw on polyvagal theory and energy psychotherapy, which attend to what the nervous system and the body carry that language alone can't reach. I don't hold to one model. 

I am particularly interested in the mind-body connection and how emotional experiences can be stored and expressed through the body.

The relationship between us is part of the work. The ways you connect, withdraw or brace yourself in the rest of your life tend to appear in the therapy room too, and when we can notice them together, they become something to understand rather than simply repeat. I let the person in front of me, and what they bring, guide how we work. Sometimes that means careful reflection, sometimes slowing down enough to notice what is happening in the body, and often both.

Over nine years I've worked with multicultural populations in university counselling services, and in a multilingual service offering therapy to refugees and asylum seekers as well as NHS Talking Therapies to non-English speakers. These settings taught me to hold distress with attention to context: that no inner life is separate from the history, displacement, pressure or uncertainty surrounding it. 

Being a counsellor for student populations has also given me extensive experience in working with neurodiverse conditions, disabilities and LGBTQIA+ issues. I approach my clients' lived experience with openness, curiosity and compassion.

I also come to this work from translation and interpreting, so I know how much can shift in the crossing between languages. Some feelings are easier to reach in the language we first heard them in, and some only become speakable in another. I work in English and Portuguese and have a sound working knowledge of French and Spanish so you are welcome to move between them. Having grown up abroad and made my life in the UK, I also know something of living between worlds, and of how straddling two cultures can bring up issues of belonging and identity that can feel both enriching and unsettling.

Sessions traditionally last for 50 minutes, but I am open to longer formats of 60, 75 or 90 minutes as well.

I will ask you to fill out a personal details form and sign a GDPR agreement. Once you have decided to work with me for a set number of sessions or open-ended therapy, I will send you a working agreement.