Colin Shaw

I work as a systemic family and couples psychotherapist. I look at the context the difficulty sits in, the relationship and the family, rather than isolating one person or allocating blame. We can meet as a family, as a couple, or one at a time, and widen the conversation when that helps. The work stays mostly with what is happening now. We use the past to understand why the present keeps taking the same shape.

The methods I use include family systems, emotionally focused therapy, motivational interviewing, and trauma-informed stabilisation. Around those, the practice draws on attachment, sensorimotor and somatic work, a trauma-informed reading of how the body reacts, and third-wave cognitive therapies, including compassion-focused therapy and dialectical behaviour therapy. I tailor them to the individual needs of each client.

What I hope you take away is a clearer view of the patterns between you, and room for conversations that are difficult to have outside a supported setting.

I work with individuals, couples and families, and with children, teenagers, adults and older adults. The situations that fit are trauma and adversity, addiction and substance use, family conflict, parenting worries, and relationships that have become stuck, disconnected, or shaken by something such as infidelity or an outside stress. I also work with neurodivergent people. A young person can come alone first. Parents can join later. Couples come for the repeating fight, the distance, or a conversation they cannot have at home.

I bring a systemic, relational way of looking. I use an intergenerational lens: how a way of relating gets handed down, and how a problem is kept going between people. I will not put the blame on one person in the family.