Lucia'’s approach and specialisms

Lucia offers an integrative, relational and trauma-informed approach to psychotherapy. Her work brings together attachment theory, relational psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy with Internal Family Systems (IFS), neuroscience and body-based approaches.

Central to her work is an understanding of how our earliest relationships and experiences can shape emotional development, our sense of self and the way we relate to others throughout life. Therapy provides a secure and non-pathologising space to understand these experiences, particularly where important emotional needs may not have been adequately recognised or met.

Lucia works with the individual rather than applying a fixed therapeutic model. Her approach considers both psychological and bodily experience, helping clients understand their responses with greater compassion and develop a stronger sense of agency in their lives.

Perinatal Psychology

Lucia has particular expertise in the psychological and emotional experiences surrounding pregnancy, birth and the transition to parenthood. She has worked with parents and parents-to-be for more than 10 years and has specialist experience in perinatal mental health, including an internship within a post-partum depression prevention psychotherapy unit at a major maternity hospital in Milan.

The perinatal period can bring significant psychological change alongside the physical changes of pregnancy and birth. Becoming a parent can also bring earlier experiences of being cared for, attachment and family relationships into sharper focus.

Lucia's attachment-based and developmental approach is particularly suited to this period. Therapy can provide space to explore anxiety, depression, post-partum depression, loss, difficult birth experiences and the emotional adjustment to becoming a parent. It can also help parents understand how their own histories may be influencing the way they experience their offspring and themselves in their new role.

Her work extends from pregnancy and birth through the first years of parenthood, supporting the emotional wellbeing of parents while considering the developing relationship between parent and baby.

Parenting Support and Developmental Psychology

Lucia offers specialist psychological support to parents who want to better understand their child's emotional and developmental needs. She does not work therapeutically with children; instead, she works directly with parents and caregivers.

Her background in developmental psychology gives her an in-depth understanding of emotional development from infancy through childhood and adolescence. This can help parents understand what can realistically be expected from a child at different developmental stages and make sense of behaviours that may otherwise feel confusing or difficult to manage.

Lucia's work is strongly informed by attachment theory. She supports parents in understanding their child's emotional world while also exploring their own responses to parenting. This can include looking at how experiences from their own childhood or family relationships may become activated within the parent-child relationship.

Her aim is to support parents in developing a more secure and emotionally attuned relationship with their child, while finding ways of parenting that are informed by their child's developmental needs rather than unrealistic expectations of what a child should be able to manage and false inferences around the motivation behind certain behaviours a child may display, which sadly have pervaded society's cultural mindset and responses towards childhood for centuries and may still lurk in our subconscious.

Trauma, PTSD and Complex PTSD

Lucia has more than 15 years of experience working with trauma, PTSD and complex PTSD, including developmental and childhood trauma, abuse and dissociation. Her specialist psychotherapy training included extensive study of attachment, trauma theory, dissociation, developmental neuroscience and body-based approaches.

Her approach understands trauma not only in terms of what happened, but also in relation to how overwhelming experiences can affect the body, relationships and the development of the self.

Drawing on attachment-based, relational and body-informed psychotherapy, Lucia provides a contained space in which traumatic experiences can be approached at a manageable pace. Her work can help clients understand responses that may once have been protective but now contribute to difficulties in relationships, emotional regulation or their sense of themselves.

This approach can be particularly relevant to complex and developmental trauma, where difficulties may have developed gradually within early relationships rather than following a single traumatic event.

Anxiety, Depression and Emotional Difficulties

Alongside her specialist work, Lucia has extensive clinical experience supporting adults experiencing anxiety, depression, panic attacks, obsessions, dissociation and psychosomatic symptoms. She also works with eating disorders, body dysmorphia, relationship difficulties, separation and divorce.

Her approach looks beyond the symptom itself to understand what it may be communicating about a person's emotional experience. Attachment, relationships, earlier experiences and current circumstances can all be explored alongside the ways distress is experienced through both mind and body.

Rather than approaching difficult emotions as something simply to eliminate, therapy offers an opportunity to understand their origins and function, develop greater emotional awareness and find healthier ways of responding to them.