When something has to change

 The slim attractive woman sits cross legged on the terrace with three friends. The autumn afternoon sun shines. People on the street walk by busily. The ocean glimmers in the distance. She wears a white linen shirt and white linen shorts. Her green eyes are covered in designer shades. She sits upright conveying enthusiasm for life. She’s listening intently and patiently to the man next to her and responds placing her hand gently on his shoulder. Another friend interjects and asks how she’s doing. She tells them she’s struggling, with a playful smile as she absently scratches some paint off the table top with her knife. Her friend nods but then catches the eye of the waiter to order a drink and forgets to come back to the conversation.

Later that evening she’s on the floor curled up in a ball. Her body heaves with sobs as she lies on the lilac yoga mat. The water bottle upturned. She feels so heavy as if she could drop through the wooden parquet floor down down down to the core of the earth. So heavy with sadness, regret, hopelessness and despair. She thinks about where her life is at compared to where she wanted it to be by now. All the things she is missing out on like being truly happy, perhaps having a family and kids.

She thinks about all the things she has done to try and shift it, in order to feel better. She has a very successful life from the outside. She earns well. She has a good job. She has a beautiful apartment. She has friends that love and accept her for whom she is. She has passions and projects. She travels. But still there is this overwhelming depression that comes over her. That no one takes seriously because of her tendency to smile and steer conversations away from her.

She’s tried coaching, she’s tried therapy. She’s tried journalling, including with AI. She’s done somatic work and plant medicine workshops. She’s been pro-active and made changes to her schedule. She’s nurturing passion projects. But the depression remains.

Maybe you can identify. On the outside things look ok. No one knows how you feel. But inside you feel often overpowered with the issue you are struggling with. It might be depression. It might be anxiety, addiction, relationship issues, burn-out. It affects many areas of your life; your sleep, your ability to enjoy life, your attitude towards relationships, your health.

You cannot carry on as you are. Something drastic has to change. You can’t imagine a future where you continue to feel as you do now. That feels too unbearable. No way.

You know that if you keep on going like this, nothing will change.

You’ve exhausted every option you can think of to change things by yourself. Much as you like to be self-sufficient you’re ready to admit you need some help. Help from someone who has therapeutic expertise and experience.

But not just the usual talk therapy. You’ve tried that and it was helpful but it didn’t fundamentally change anything. You need a type of therapy that actually shifts things. You need a therapist who knows what she’s doing, who has many years of training and who you can trust.

You know this has to be a turning point. This has to be a moment where you turn your life around. The moment at which you decide to slow down, do some forensic deep work on your emotions, beliefs, mind-set, trauma and then re-start and head off in a happier direction.

You’re ready to make a big investment in personal time and resources because this matters. You matter. You need to do something big and forensic.

You can’t afford to waste time and resources with the wrong approach or the wrong person. You feel as if the clock is ticking and you need the right person and the right intervention, the right package. Now. Before you miss out on more of your own life.

What I offer

Over a 5-week period you make therapy the most central part of your life. Each day you attend a 2-hour therapy session. This happens for two weeks. Then there is a week off and then another two weeks of the same. You are doing intensive therapy, a bit like a retreat or residential except that you are doing it on your own in partnership with me, rather than a cohort.

The therapy is tailor-made and designed to suit your needs. It may include EMDR, IFS-informed parts work, Gestalt therapy and somatic therapy. It includes a 90-minute assessment session in order to clarify and get specific on the outcome we are aiming to create for you. I will then design a framework outlining the phases of the therapy and what each phase will include. Phase one will include preparation, such as somatic exercises to increase your ability to self-regulate and feel internally safe. It might also include parts-mapping and visualisations for EMDR. The second phase will be active processing. The last phase will include assimilation.

Whilst we collaborate on the outline of the work, I allow space for spontaneity and flexibility, and for trusting the process. I might change how we work if my therapeutic intuition suggests a way of working in the moment that would be helpful.

My approach as a relational Gestalt therapist is to view our therapy as a collaboration. Whilst I hold the expertise and experience, I trust that you, as the client, are ultimately the expert on yourself. I will never tell you what to do or give you advice. My job is to empower you to find trust within, so that you end our therapy trusting yourself to know what the next steps are. Ultimately, my job is for you to go forth from therapy feeling more integrated, more whole, more confident, more at peace — and, of course, to have shifted the thing you originally contacted me about.

More about my approach

In session, I work phenomenologically — with what's actually alive between us in the room, not just the story being told. That's the Gestalt training underneath everything else I do: noticing what's happening in your body, your language, the gaps and the repetitions, as it's happening, not only after the fact.

Because this is intensive work, that in-the-moment attention matters more than usual. We're not waiting a week to catch something that shifted mid-session — we can come back to it the next morning, still warm. That continuity is a large part of why this format works the way it does.

The evidence for this type of format, and for EMDR

EMDR is one of the treatments recommended by NICE and the World Health Organization for trauma. It’s well established — plenty of therapists offer it, usually spread across months in a once-a-week rhythm. What’s less well known is how it holds up when it’s brought closer together, into a concentrated block instead.

The research on that specific question is newer, but it’s encouraging. Studies looking at daily, intensive trauma-focused therapy — rather than the usual weekly pace — have found people do just as well, often stay with the process more easily, and don’t show any greater risk of being overwhelmed by it. That includes work done entirely online, not just in person. It’s still a relatively young area of research, but what exists points the same way: working closely together, day after day, isn’t a riskier way to do this work. It may simply be a different rhythm for it.

In my own experience, working this intensively tends to move things faster than the maths of “40 hours” suggests on its own. Something about the continuity — not losing the thread of what we’re in the middle of, being able to come back to it the next morning rather than a week later — seems to let the work compound in a way weekly sessions don’t. My own sense, from years of doing this, is that a period like this is roughly equivalent to what might unfold over three to six months of once-a-week therapy. That’s my belief based on clinical experience, not a figure I can point you to in a study — I want to be honest about that distinction rather than dress it up as something it isn’t.

About me

I'm Alexandra Stevens, a UKCP-accredited psychotherapist. I've been in practice since 2015, and my core training is in Gestalt therapy — six years at the Gestalt Centre in London, where I later went on to teach Gestalt theory and practice on their Master's programme.

Alongside that, I trained in EMDR, accredited with EMDR UK and Europe since 2019, and I work with attachment-informed trauma, somatic approaches, and IFS-informed parts work — drawing on whichever of these a person's history actually calls for, rather than running one fixed protocol.

I'm based in Lisbon, Portugal, and work with clients internationally, online.

Who this is for

This is for you if you're a psychologically stable adult, not in acute crisis, who has reached a real turning point and is ready to make this the central focus of a defined period of your life. You might be dealing with depression, anxiety, burnout, relationship patterns, or the aftermath of trauma — the common thread isn't the label, it's that something in how you've been living has to change, and you're ready to do serious, structured work to change it.

It isn't the right fit if you're currently in crisis — active suicidal risk, a recent attempt, active psychosis or mania, an unstable eating disorder, or unmanaged substance dependence all need a different, more immediately supported kind of care first, not this. If any of that is true for you right now, I'll tell you honestly at assessment, and help you find the right place to start instead.

Assessment and safeguarding

Before we begin, we have a full assessment together — not a formality, but the process by which we work out whether this is genuinely right for you, and what your five weeks should actually contain. I'll ask about your history, what's brought you to this point, and anything that needs to be in place around you for this work to be safe.

If you're based outside the UK or Portugal, we'll also talk honestly about what's possible given where you're physically located — insurance and accreditation don't automatically mean therapy can legally be delivered to every country, and I'd rather have that conversation upfront than leave it unspoken.

If you have an existing GP, psychiatrist, or local therapist, I'll usually ask you to keep them informed, and for some presentations, having a local contact in place is a condition of us working together. Throughout the programme, there's a clear plan for what happens if something difficult comes up outside of session hours.

The cost

What you get

40 hours of therapy, drawing on whichever approach is needed — usually a mixture of attachment-informed EMDR, IFS-informed parts work, and relational Gestalt therapy.

A full assessment session before we begin, and a framework designed specifically around you.

Workbooks and reflection material between sessions, created specifically for you and what you're working on.

The investment is £8,000 for the full five-week programme.

That reflects the scope of what's involved beyond the 40 live hours themselves — the assessment, the individual formulation, and the ongoing thinking that goes into a programme built around one person rather than a fixed protocol.

Questions

Is this an EMDR intensive?

No. EMDR is one of the tools I draw on, not the whole programme. This is an integrative psychotherapy intensive — the approach is built around you, not around one technique.

Is this coaching?

No. This is clinical psychotherapy, delivered by a UKCP-accredited psychotherapist. It isn't a life-coaching programme, and I won't be handing you generic frameworks or advice.

What happens after the 40 hours?

We build an ending into the work itself, rather than just stopping. Depending on what's needed, we may also arrange a single follow-up session some weeks later.

Can I join from anywhere?

I work with clients internationally, online. Where you're physically based does matter for what's legally possible, though, so we'll talk about that honestly at assessment rather than assuming it's fine everywhere.

Next steps

If this feels like it might be the turning point you're describing, the next step is a conversation, not a commitment. Get in touch, and we'll set up an assessment to find out, honestly, whether this is the right fit — for what you're carrying, and for where you are right now.