Methods
How I work, and why it might matter to you.
Trauma-informed throughout, and a range of approaches chosen to fit the person rather than the other way round.
Ravi Teja works in a trauma-informed way, whatever you have come for: safety in the room before disclosure, your pace rather than a protocol, and no judgement about what you bring. She is trained in a wide range of approaches — among them EMDR, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy and mindfulness-based psychotherapy — and also uses Gottman Method work with couples. Which one is used depends on what you bring; most often it is a blend, decided together in the first few sessions rather than prescribed in advance.
What “trauma-informed” means here, in practice.
It is a phrase almost every counselling website uses. These are the things it commits this practice to, whether or not you have come for trauma work.
- 01
Safety comes before disclosure
Nothing therapeutic happens in a room you cannot settle in. Establishing that comes first, and it is not treated as preamble to get through before the real session starts — it is the part that makes the rest possible.
- 02
You set the pace
You will not be walked into the hardest thing because it is session four and that is where the model says it goes. What you talk about, and when, is led by you. Slowing down is a legitimate choice and is treated as one.
- 03
Validation, not assessment of whether you are overreacting
Your response to what happened is treated as information about what you went through, not as a symptom to be corrected. People arrive having been told they are too much or not over it yet. That is not the starting position here.
- 04
Compassion, and no judgement about what you bring
Substance use, anger, intrusive thoughts, things done and things survived — these are the ordinary content of clinical work, not grounds for being thought less of. Being non-judgemental is a clinical stance, not a courtesy.
- 05
Choice and control stay with you
What you are asked to do is explained before it is done, and consented to. Trauma work in particular is planned with you rather than sprung on you, and you can stop, pause or change direction at any point without having to justify it.
- 06
Culture and language are part of the picture
What counts as safety, family obligation or shame is not the same everywhere. Sessions can be held in your own language, and the context you come from is treated as something to be understood rather than translated out of the way.
You do not need to know the method. Only what is wrong.
Most people arrive describing a problem, not a therapy. Here is what each one usually leads to.
Anxiety counselling
Worry that has stopped switching off, a racing mind at night, or a level of dread that has started making decisions for you.
Trauma therapy
Something happened, and your body has not accepted that it is over — startle, avoidance, sleep that has not come back.
Stress management
Not a diagnosis — a load. Work, caregiving, money or study stacked high enough that it has started costing you sleep and patience.
Emotional regulation and distress tolerance
Feelings that arrive at full volume, and the aftermath of acting on them before they pass.
Anger management
Reacting faster than you can think, and dealing with the consequences afterwards.
ADHD counselling
Support with focus, organisation, follow-through, and the frustration and self-criticism that build up around them.
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
EMDR is a non-traditional psychotherapy used particularly for post-traumatic stress. Research has shown it effective at reducing PTSD symptoms and at resolving memories, so that a memory can be experienced as a point in the past rather than as something still active in the present.
Is EMDR suitable for me?
For some clients I use EMDR as a way to navigate past experiences or memories within our sessions. It blends with a range of other therapeutic techniques rather than replacing them. Whether it suits you depends on your individual circumstances and history, and we work through those together in the early sessions so that you can make an informed choice about whether to bring it into your therapy.
How does EMDR help with PTSD?
EMDR helps process traumatic memories and reduce the distress attached to them. In targeted sessions you engage in bilateral stimulation, which assists the brain in reprocessing traumatic events. That allows distressing memories to be integrated adaptively, which lowers emotional reactivity and relieves symptoms. It also tends to restore a sense of control over your responses to triggers and distressing thoughts.
What does EMDR treatment look like?
You recall distressing memories while engaging in bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements or tapping. Sessions begin by establishing a therapeutic relationship and identifying which memories to target. During reprocessing you focus on the targeted memory while I guide you through sets of bilateral stimulation. Through the session you may notice your emotional response and your perception of the event start to shift.
How long does EMDR take to improve PTSD?
It varies with individual circumstances and symptom severity. Some people see significant improvement after only a few sessions; others need more extensive work. Sessions generally run 60 to 90 minutes, and research suggests noticeable improvement in PTSD symptoms within roughly 6 to 12 sessions on average. Your readiness to engage and the complexity of your trauma history both influence that timeline.
CBT
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
CBT is a short-term, goal-oriented, practical approach to problem-solving. I use it to change the patterns of thinking or behaviour sitting behind a difficulty, and so change the way you feel. It is used for everything from sleep problems and relationship difficulties to substance use, anxiety and depression.
How can CBT help with anxiety and depression?
CBT addresses the negative thought patterns and behaviours that feed anxiety and depression. In structured sessions you learn to identify and challenge distorted thinking that contributes to your symptoms, and you build practical coping skills for daily life. By gradually approaching feared situations or thoughts rather than avoiding them, CBT reduces both the anxiety and the avoidance itself.
What does CBT treatment look like?
Structured sessions where we work together on specific goals. You learn to identify and challenge the negative thoughts and beliefs contributing to your distress. I often set exercises between sessions to reinforce what we have covered and to help it carry into real situations. CBT stays focused on the present and the future, and on practical strategies rather than lengthy analysis of the past.
How long does CBT take?
CBT is considered a short-term therapy, typically running 12 to 20 sessions. Some people see significant improvement within a few weeks of starting; others need longer. We set treatment goals together at the outset and review progress regularly, and the length is tailored to you rather than fixed in advance.
Is CBT suitable for me?
CBT is versatile and suits a wide range of concerns, and it is particularly effective for anxiety disorders, depression, phobias and PTSD. If you want a structured, goal-oriented therapy focused on practical strategies for managing symptoms, it may be a good fit. It also adapts well across ages and backgrounds.
DBT
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy
DBT is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy focused on teaching skills to manage stress, regulate emotions and improve relationships. It emphasises living in the present moment while building healthier ways of coping, so that life’s challenges become more navigable.
What kind of challenges does DBT help with?
DBT is particularly useful where emotions feel overwhelming or relationships are repeatedly difficult. It helps people managing mood disorders such as depression handle intense emotions more effectively, and it is well established for borderline personality disorder, teaching skills for impulsivity, unstable relationships and identity disturbance. It is also used with substance use, eating disorders and PTSD.
What does DBT treatment look like?
Weekly sessions where we learn and practise specific skills together, focusing on mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. I use a mix of teaching, modelling and role-play so the skills become usable rather than theoretical, with practice between sessions to help them carry into daily life.
How long does DBT take?
It typically involves weekly sessions spanning several months to a year. Some people find significant improvement within a few months; others benefit from longer-term work. We set goals together and review progress regularly so the length reflects what you actually need.
Is DBT suitable for me?
DBT suits people looking for practical strategies to manage intense emotions, navigate relationships and cope with stress. It is particularly helpful where there is difficulty with emotional regulation, impulsivity or recurring interpersonal conflict, and it adapts across age groups and backgrounds.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy
Mindfulness-based psychotherapy brings meditation techniques into therapy to cultivate warmth, compassion and self-awareness. Through focused attention and open monitoring you develop the ability to observe your own thoughts and feelings without judgment. You do not need to become a dedicated meditator for it to work.
What does mindfulness-based psychotherapy help with?
It helps with stress, anxiety, depression and trauma-related symptoms. By cultivating present-moment awareness you learn to observe thoughts and emotions without judgment, which reduces both reactivity and rumination. It also builds self-compassion and acceptance, which matters particularly for anyone carrying low self-esteem or shame.
What does treatment look like?
Mindfulness practices integrated with conventional psychotherapy. Sessions focus on present-moment awareness and non-judgmental acceptance of thoughts, emotions and physical sensations. You learn exercises such as meditation, breathing work and body scan techniques, and we work on applying those principles to the everyday situations that actually cause you difficulty.
How long does it take?
It depends on the type and severity of what you are dealing with, and on your own progress. Therapy can range from a few sessions to several months. We decide the length together, reviewing progress regularly and adjusting the plan as needed rather than committing to a fixed course at the start.
Is it suitable for me?
That depends on your needs, your preferences and the nature of your symptoms, which is exactly what the first sessions are for. We look at your symptoms, your history and what you want from therapy, and decide together whether this approach fits.
EFT
Emotionally Focused Therapy
EFT is a short-term, structured approach to relationship distress, grounded in attachment theory. It works on the emotional cycle a couple gets caught in — the pursuit and withdrawal underneath a recurring argument — rather than on the content of the argument itself, with the aim of re-establishing a secure bond.
How is EFT different from other couples work?
It treats the recurring argument as a symptom rather than the problem. Most couples arrive with a cycle — one person presses for connection, the other withdraws to avoid conflict, and each response provokes the other. EFT makes that cycle explicit, slows it down in session, and works with the attachment need sitting under each position. Communication tools are useful, but they tend not to hold until the emotional cycle underneath has shifted.
Can EFT be used with individuals?
Yes. It is best known for couples, but the same attachment-focused work applies individually, particularly where a pattern in close relationships keeps repeating across different partners or across family relationships. Whether it is the right fit is something we look at together in the early sessions.
EFFT
Emotion Focused Family Therapy
EFFT extends the same emotion-focused work to families, and treats parents and caregivers as the people best placed to help — not as the problem to be managed around. It builds practical skill in responding to a family member’s distress, and works directly with the blocks that get in the way of that: fear of making things worse, exhaustion, and self-blame.
Who is EFFT for?
Families where someone is struggling — a young person or an adult — and the people around them want to help but are not sure how, or have tried and found it made things worse. It is used widely with anxiety, depression and eating disorders. The focus is on increasing the family’s capacity to support, rather than on locating fault.
Does the person who is struggling have to attend?
Not necessarily. EFFT can be done with caregivers alone, which is one of the reasons it is useful — it gives a family something to work on when the person they are worried about is not ready to come in. Who attends is agreed at the start and revisited as things change, rather than fixed in advance.
Nine more approaches, and what each one is for.
Kept short deliberately. You do not need to choose between these — that is decided together, once there is something to decide it about.
Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT)
A brief, forward-looking approach that starts from what you want to be different rather than from an account of how the problem began. It works with the exceptions — the times the difficulty is already smaller — and builds from there. Useful when you have limited sessions, or when re-telling the history is more than you want to do right now.
Person-Centred Therapy
The approach underneath most of the others: that people move towards what they need when they are met with genuine warmth, accurate empathy and no judgment. In practice it means you are not diagnosed at, corrected or steered — you are taken at your word, and the direction of the work is yours to set.
Narrative Therapy
Narrative therapy separates the person from the problem — you are not the anxiety, the anger or the thing that happened to you. It works on the story you have been given about yourself, often by someone else, and on recovering the parts of your own history that story left out. It is a compassionate fit where shame or self-blame is doing most of the damage.
Culturally Sensitive Counselling
Therapy that does not require you to translate your life before you can talk about it. Culture, faith, migration, and what a family expects of you are treated as context to be understood rather than symptoms to be worked around — and sessions can be held in your own language. Nothing you bring has to be explained from first principles or defended.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
ERP is the established treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, and is also used for phobias and severe anxiety. You approach what triggers the obsession, in a graded order you agree in advance, while gradually dropping the compulsion or reassurance that usually follows. It is structured and paced deliberately — nothing happens that you have not consented to first.
Motivational Interviewing (MI)
A way of working with ambivalence that does not argue with it. Most people wanting to change something already know the arguments on both sides, and being pushed tends to entrench the other half. MI works with your own reasons for change rather than supplying them, which is why it is non-confrontational by design and why it is standard in substance use work.
Strength-Based Therapy
Starts from what is already working — the capabilities, relationships and coping you arrived with, which a difficult period tends to make invisible to the person who has them. It does not minimise what is wrong. It refuses to treat the problem as the whole picture, which matters most for anyone who has come to see themselves entirely through what they are struggling with.
Written Exposure Therapy (WET)
A brief, structured trauma protocol — usually around five sessions — in which you write about the traumatic event in a specific, guided way, with the session used to process what the writing brings up. It is one of the shortest evidence-based PTSD treatments available, and there is no homework between sessions and no requirement to say any of it out loud.
Jungian Therapy
Depth work, concerned with the parts of yourself that operate below deliberate thought — recurring patterns, dreams, and the things you keep finding yourself doing without deciding to. It is slower and less symptom-focused than CBT, and it suits a different question: not only how to feel better, but who you have become and why.
What the first hour is actually spent on.
Not knowing what a first session involves is one of the most common reasons people put off making the appointment. Here is the shape of it.
- 01
The first ten minutes are administrative
Consent, confidentiality and its limits, fees, and how records are kept. It is dealt with at the start, briefly and plainly, so that it is not sitting unspoken over the rest of the hour.
- 02
Establishing safety in the room
Before anything therapeutic can happen, the space has to be one you can settle in. That is the work of the early part of a first session, and it is not rushed — in person or on video, the same applies.
- 03
You share what you choose to share
There is no obligation to give a full history, and no expectation that you arrive at the hardest thing first. You are not led through a questionnaire. What you bring, and in what order, is yours to decide — that is a deliberate part of how this practice works, not a concession.
- 04
Working towards regulation, not just disclosure
Talking about something distressing without any means of settling afterwards is not therapeutic. Part of a first session is building an experience of your nervous system regulating in the room, so that what you disclose is something you can leave the session having managed rather than reopened.
- 05
Setting therapeutic goals before you leave
The first session ends by agreeing what the work is actually for — specific goals for the sessions that follow, named by you rather than assigned to you, and reviewed as things change.
- 06
Deciding whether this is the right fit
Fit is assessed in both directions. You are deciding whether you can work with this counsellor, and she is deciding whether she is the right clinician for what you have brought. If she is not, you will be told so and pointed somewhere more appropriate.
What this practice does, and what it does not.
Assessment and diagnosis are not offered. Ravi Teja is a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC), not a physician or a psychologist. Formal diagnosis and psychological assessment fall outside that scope, and where you need one you will be told so and directed to the right professional rather than worked around.
Risk assessment and safety planning are offered. Where suicidal thoughts are part of what you are carrying, that is something to bring into the room rather than leave out of it. Suicide risk assessment and collaborative safety planning are a normal part of clinical practice here, and disclosing them will not end your therapy.
Not sure which of these is right for you?
That is genuinely normal, and working it out is part of the first few sessions rather than something you need to decide beforehand.