Alice Tew Counselling and Psychotherapy

Alice Tew Counselling and Psychotherapy Online therapy for insecure attachment and complex trauma.

If you believed the headlines, you’d think therapists are getting a kick out of splitting up loving families but I don’t...
06/08/2026

If you believed the headlines, you’d think therapists are getting a kick out of splitting up loving families but I don’t think that could be further from the truth.

Having been through estrangement myself, I’d never want anyone to go through the pain of it unless it was definitely the right option for them. What I know as a therapist is that it’s such a personal decision that comes after a lot of thought, usually a lot of attempts to repair the relationship or trying to be different to fit in. Eventually it can become too painful to carry on.

There’s no divorce, no funeral, just a huge amount of grief that people don’t understand or don’t know what to say. Having a therapist to support you through it can mean you feel less alone and help you rebuild your life in a way that really works for you.

If you want to get started, send me a message and I’ll send you my availability or find the link to book in my bio 💛

06/08/2026

📚 Your brain is meant to file all your memories away like books on a bookshelf but when something happens that makes us feel unsafe, the books end up in a pile on the floor for easy access 📖📖📖📖📖📖

EMDR therapy helps when you know logically that you’re safe now but your body still keeps jumping into fight or flight when it doesn’t need to anymore.

I’ve got spaces to start straight away, drop me message or find my website in my bio 💛

24/07/2026

You weren’t born with it - that feeling that something is wrong with you, that underneath everything, you’re somehow the problem, can feel so old and so certain that it seems like it’s just who you are.

It isn’t, even if it feels like it.

Somewhere, when you were small, things were painful. And when you’re small, you don’t learn that the grown-ups got it wrong. You start believing that you did - that if you were a bit better, a bit less, a bit different, it would have been okay. That the problem must be you.

That’s what a child does to survive. Deciding it’s your fault feels safer than the truth because if it’s your fault, then maybe you can fix it. Maybe you can earn your way to being acceptable and lovable.

Now it shapes everything like how hard you try, how much you apologise, how difficult it is to let anyone be kind to you without waiting for the catch.

Here’s the part I most want you to hear: you can know, on paper, that none of it was your fault, and still feel like it was. Understanding it and feeling different are two separate things, and our quick fix culture makes it harder to heal.

Anything that was learned can, slowly and gently and with the right kind of help, be unlearned.

You weren’t born with it. Which means you don’t have to keep living with it either.

An instagram therapist helped me deal withestrangement… Lots of people believe therapists shouldn’t share about their pe...
22/06/2026

An instagram therapist helped me deal with
estrangement…

Lots of people believe therapists shouldn’t share about their personal lives on social media and sometimes that’s for good reason, but sometimes it can really help...

Three years ago, I became estranged from my mum. I didn’t really know anyone who had been through something similar and I was feeling really alone...

I knew logically it wasn’t my fault and I still found myself shocked that parts of me felt deep shame and that there must be something wrong with me…

Fortunately I came across a couple of Instagram accounts where therapists were talking about their own experiences, and one even talked all about it on a podcast...

I no longer felt so alone and ashamed - there were people out there who got it and had been through similar things.
This is why it’s so important for therapists to share their experiences...

It’s even more important for people from marginalised groups to see us sharing our experiences...
So I’m doing a talk at the Prosper in Private Practice
Summit all about self-disclosure, visibility and how we can show up ethically online.

It’s not always easy to talk to people we love about what’s going on for us. Often they can react in unhelpful ways like...
01/06/2026

It’s not always easy to talk to people we love about what’s going on for us. Often they can react in unhelpful ways like getting very emotional, critical or dismissive. They may try and offer solutions when what you really need is someone to just listen while you get things off your chest.

Lots of people that come to therapy can also then feel guilty for feeling frustrated because they know their loved one means well but what they offer just doesn’t help. I get it.

Coming to therapy means you get the chance to really be heard and understood which opens up the possibility for healing.

Some reminders if you have highly critical parents ✨ ✨ Their criticism is only their perspective, not the whole truth.✨ ...
25/05/2026

Some reminders if you have highly critical parents ✨

✨ Their criticism is only their perspective, not the whole truth.

✨ You should not have to earn their love, respect or approval.

✨ Mistakes don’t define who you are as a person.

✨ Setting boundaries isn’t selfish; it’s self-respect.

✨ You are allowed to live the life you choose even if they don’t agree.

***

Hello, Im Alice 👩🏻

I’m a relational EMDR therapist who helps emotionally overwhelmed adults who are stuck in survival mode to make sense of their emotions, quieten their inner critic and build healthy relationships.

Comment or DM the word CALM for my FREE inner critic workbook 💫

Save this for later, send to a friend and follow for more!

📷 Photos by the wonderful taken at 😍

The voice in my head looks like Little My from the Moomins. She sits on a tree swing and cackles things like “who do you...
02/05/2026

The voice in my head looks like Little My from the Moomins. She sits on a tree swing and cackles things like “who do you think you are” and “you’ll never succeed.”

For a long time I tried to argue with her. Prove her wrong. Drown her out. It made her louder.

What actually helped was getting curious. Understanding that she isn’t the enemy, she’s just a part of me that’s been trying to keep me safe from embarrassment and rejection for a very long time. She’s afraid. She’s doing her job. She just doesn’t need to be in charge.

Now when she starts up, I don’t fight her. I have a note card on my desk that says “what if the price of entry to the life I want is to make mistakes, get things wrong and be cringe?” and I get on with it anyway.

If your inner critic is louder than you’d like, I’ve made something that might help. Comment or DM me CALM and I’ll send you the free workbook.

01/05/2026

The people in your life think they know what’s wrong with you. Too emotional. Too intense. Too sensitive. Too dramatic.

The worst part isn’t that they say it. It’s that you’ve heard it so many times, starting so young, that it stopped sounding like their opinion. It just sounds like a fact about you. Something you were born with. Something to manage and apologise for.

What they’re actually seeing is someone who feels things deeply in a world that had very strong opinions about how much feeling was acceptable. Someone who probably learned early that her emotions were an inconvenience. That being upset was a problem to be solved rather than something to be sat with.

That’s not a you problem. That’s a what-you-were-taught problem.

You’re not too much. You were just never shown what to do with what you feel, and nobody around you was equipped to help you figure it out.

I work with women who are exhausted from being told they’re too much. Who feel everything deeply and have spent years trying to feel it more quietly. Who can’t quite think their way out of it no matter how hard they try.

If this sounds familiar, I’d love to hear from you. No waiting list, all online. Link in bio.

03/04/2026

Trauma isn’t always obvious. In fact, research shows that a repeated experience of not having your emotions met can have a bigger impact than the things that we’d normally thing of as traumatic.

I work with people who often start by telling me they had a good childhood. They had a roof over their head, clothes, toys, days out, holidays… but what’s often missing is a sense of emotional safety, being accepted for who they were or feeling like they had someone safe to talk to when things went wrong.

None of this is about blame. It’s about the impact on you and what’s needed now to feel better - to stop feeling like your fundamentally broken.

You probably don’t even register most of these as triggers. You just call it being sensitive.Which makes sense. When som...
31/03/2026

You probably don’t even register most of these as triggers. You just call it being sensitive.
Which makes sense. When something’s been the weather your whole life, you stop noticing it’s raining.
Growing up with a critical parent doesn’t just shape how you feel about yourself. It shapes how your nervous system reads the world — and it keeps doing that long after you’ve left home.
I’m Alice. I work online with young women unpicking exactly this. Find the link to book in my bio.

Address

Davenham

Opening Hours

Monday 10:30am - 4pm
Tuesday 9am - 4pm
Thursday 8am - 4pm
Friday 9:30am - 4pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Alice Tew Counselling and Psychotherapy posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to Alice Tew Counselling and Psychotherapy:

Shortcuts

Share

Category