I’m Garthine Walker, a UKCP-registered relational integrative psychotherapist based in Cardiff, who works predominantly online with clients across the UK and sometimes internationally.
Who I work with
I work with adults who are ready for thoughtful, in-depth psychological work – people who sense that something persists, unchanged, despite their best efforts to understand or manage it. They are often highly reflective, and not infrequently high-achieving (some might say over-achieving), but find that insight alone hasn’t brought the change they were hoping for.
More specifically, I have particular expertise working with people who are living with the long-term effects of developmental or relational trauma, including those who wouldn’t necessarily use the term ‘trauma’ to describe their experience. I work with chronic shame, persistent negative self-talk, and the patterns that form around early relationships in which emotional needs went unmet. I also work extensively with neurodivergent adults – those with ADHD, AuDHD, autism – at any stage of their understanding of themselves, whether formally diagnosed, self-identified, or still finding their way towards that understanding. I also work with those who experience high sensitivity (HSP).
Other people with whom I work well include those who are stuck in repeating patterns despite previous therapy; those navigating burnout that feels different in kind from ordinary exhaustion; professionals, creatives, academics, and therapists and other helping professionals who find themselves struggling with the particular pressures of demanding work alongside a rich and sometimes turbulent inner life; people who have been given previous diagnoses, including of personality disorders, which don’t seem to fit who they understand themselves to be now; and people who experience immersive or maladaptive daydreaming, a little-known but significant area in which I have particular clinical experience.
How I work: relational integrative psychotherapy
Integration
As a humanistic and relational integrative therapist, my practice is informed by more than one trauma-sensitive and attachment-informed psychotherapeutic model. This involves the selective integration of psychotherapeutic approaches and theories into a coherent understanding of what it is to be human. My core training and further professional development has included psychodynamic, developmental, Gestalt therapy, transactional analysis and theories of personality adaptations, somatic and body psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems and EMDR.
I am interested in the whole person and all the parts that make up our unique selves. This includes our affect (feelings), cognition (thoughts and intellect), behaviour (actions), somatic or physiological (what’s going on in our bodies) and, for some clients, spiritual experiencing. How we work with these aspects of the self depends on you as a person and what you bring to therapy.
Together we’ll explore your familiar patterns of feeling, thinking, acting, being, and experiencing the world and your relationships with your self, others and your environment. We’ll work towards identifying, accepting and integrating these aspects of the self, especially ‘parts’ that you may find it hard to acknowledge or which you have found confusing or challenging.
Many of the ways in which we experience ourselves and our relationships to others and to our environment were learnt when we were young as means to protect, defend and look after ourselves as we adapted to the world around us. But these may no longer be helping us. Psychotherapy facilitates the self-awareness, healing and growth that allows you to choose how to live and be in the world authentically.
Relationship
The relationship between therapist and client is possibly the single most important aspect of successful therapy. What each individual requires from the therapeutic relationship may take time to emerge, which is why I contract in the first instance only to ten or so sessions. This gives us time to get to know each other and for the precise nature of our work together to arise without being forced. You may find that short-term work meets your needs for now or you may begin therapy already anticipating medium or long-term work. Most of my work tends to be medium- or long-term, by which I mean a number of months or one or more years. It’s fine not to ‘know’ at the outset. We can see what emerges. I seek to provide the safety required for us to explore together in a gentle and often subtle way – and at a therapeutically appropriate pace – the feelings, thoughts, behaviours, sensations and circumstances you wish to share with me. Some of these may be intimate and/or painful for you; others may seem to you quite mundane.
If you’re wondering what that might be like in a therapy session, you can read more in my blog post on how I practice relational integrative psychotherapy.
Frequency of Psychotherapy Sessions
Weekly or Fortnightly
Committing to regular weekly or fortnightly sessions is usually part of this process. Meeting at the same time, on the same day, week after week, isn’t just a scheduling convenience: it’s part of what makes the work possible. The regularity of our meetings helps to build and strengthen the therapeutic relationship, making therapy a place of sufficient emotional safety and containment in which we can explore how it is to be you at the depth required to bring about relief, healing and growth.
Much of what we’re working with in psychotherapy doesn’s shift through insight alone. That’s true of patterns laid down early, ways of relating that formed before you had much say in them, and ways of being that have become automatic, and more. We have to become aware of these things first, but then the shift occurs through experience, repeated often enough and consistently enough that something genuinely new can take hold. A weekly or fortnightly rhythm gives us that consistency. It also means that what emerges in one session is still close enough in your mind and body to carry into the next, rather than needing to be rebuilt each time from further away.
This is especially true in the early stages of our work together, while we’re still finding our footing and the relationship between us is still forming. Trust, like anything else, needs enough contact to grow.
Weekly and fortnightly sessions cost £105 and last 50 minutes.
Monthly Extended Depth Sessions: A Different Rhythm for Ongoing Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is usually offered weekly or fortnightly, and for many people that rhythm works well. But it isn’t the only way to do sustained, meaningful work together, and it doesn’t suit everyone.
Depth Sessions are longer sessions of 75 or 90 minutes held once a month, for people who want an ongoing therapeutic relationship without more frequent attendance. The extra time means we’re not working against the clock: there’s room to properly arrive, go into what matters, and come back out again before we finish.
Depth Sessions might suit you if you:
- have a demanding job, caring responsibilities, or a life that makes weekly appointments hard to sustain
- prefer greater intervals between sessions to reflect and let things settle
- are neurodivergent, and find a longer, less frequent session more manageable than a shorter weekly one
- have done therapy before and want to continue that work without the same frequency
This isn’t about compressing therapy into a limited timeframe. It’s a different shape of ongoing work, built around depth and continuity rather than frequency.
Where clinically appropriate, EMDR can be part of a Depth Session. However, as our work develops and we begin active EMDR processing work , we’ll discuss whether the monthly rhythm still serves you, or whether a period of closer spacing would be more appropriate.
Monthly Depth Sessions cost £155 for 75 minutes and £190 for 90 minutes.
If you think monthly Depth Sessions might suit you, do get in touch. As with any new piece of work together, we’d start with an initial free conversation to see whether this way of working with me feels right to you.
Confidentiality
What you share with me during our therapy sessions is confidential. Rare and exceptional circumstances in which confidentiality might be broken relate to legal and ethical matters, which are included in my therapy agreement and which we shall discuss at our first meeting. If ever such conditions arose, I should always aim to discuss them with you before involving anyone else unless I am legally bound not to do so.
Testimonials
In line with the UKCP’s Code of Ethics and Professional Practice (2019), I don’t share client testimonials either here or in any other form of advertising or marketing.
Social Media
Please note that I don’t accept ‘friend’ requests or personal messages from clients on social media platforms. This protects your confidentially, and maintains the boundaries necessary for an effective and safe therapeutic relationship
Inclusivity & Diversity
I’m committed to striving for an anti-oppressive practice, whereby I aim to treat with respect the diversity of human experience, whatever your gender identity, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality, sexual orientation, neurotype, ability, disability, religion, culture or political beliefs, social and economic background, or immigration status.
I welcome persons of all backgrounds, genders, and body size and shape. I aim to offer an anti-racist, GSRD- and LGBTQIA+-affirming, and neurodivergent-affirming practice. I have lived experience of trauma and neurodivergence.
I also take seriously our collective ecological health. Since August 2021, I have taken measures for my business to be carbon neutral, as you can see by clicking here.
