My name is Samantha McEwan. I am a BACP registered psychotherapist and mental health nurse, providing psychological therapy in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. 

Over 25 years of core profession experience as a mental health nurse has underpinned and enhanced my psychotherapy practice with a framework for high standards of ethical, clinical and professional practice.

I have a deeper understanding of mental health conditions and a higher degree of expertise and sensitivity in working with people who experience mild through to highly complex mental health difficulties. I also consider physical health and the effects of medication.

I help my clients work through a wide range of difficulties affecting their mental health and wellbeing in their personal, relational or working lives such as:

• social or generalised anxiety and panic
• depression
• low self-esteem and confidence
• overthinking and rumination
• poor emotion regulation 
• chronic physical illness
• attachment and relationship issues
• binge eating disorder or bulimia nervosa 
• childhood trauma such as neglect or abuse 
• chronic or complex trauma and PTSD/ cPTSD
• career difficulties, workplace stress, bullying or burnout

Clients experience a supportive, compassionate, and trauma-informed approach based on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, from the perspective of understanding and working with the impact of early or adult life experiences on wellbeing, identity and relationships. 

Additional therapies I integrate depending on individual client needs are: 

• ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
• CFT- Compassion Focused Therapy
• DBT- Dialectical Behavioural Therapy skills, 
• Mindfulness Based CBT (adapted for trauma)
• Trauma therapy using systemic, somatic and cognitive processing approaches, and attachment focused therapy
• Schema focused therapy

Reconnecting with your life and future

Often when difficult experiences affect our health and wellbeing we can lose our sense of agency, identity, self-worth, strengths, boundaries and purpose - therapy can help you to foster reconnection with these. 

In therapy we will work together to:

• Identify what you don't want anymore, and what you do want for yourself- what you'd like to be better or different, and how you'll know when you get there
• Recognise what needs to change -this might mean letting go of or changing values, behaviours, relationship patterns or beliefs about yourself that are no longer helpful or are holding you back from who you'd like to be
• Explore and process emotions and past experiences that may have created difficulties, helping you understand how they’ve shaped the way you see yourself and others - and begin to shift those patterns
• Take steps to develop, re-build and move forward with emotional and mental clarity, renewed sense of self, wellbeing, meaning and purpose - perhaps with more assertiveness and a deeper connection to your values, confidence, resilience and relationships.