Claire Ratcliffe: Psychotherapist, Supervisor & Couples Therapist

Claire Ratcliffe: Psychotherapist, Supervisor & Couples Therapist Psychotherapist, Supervisor & Couples Therapist. There are many reasons why people choose to come to therapy.

Podcast: Healing Relationships: With Ourselves, Others & The World

For more information please click on the link belo For some, it can be a sense of discomfort, an internal struggle, or perhaps an external trigger has pushed you towards seeking support. Therapy can be an empowering process, supporting you to reconnect with yourself, to notice and take care of your needs, bringing you self awareness, healing, and a deeper sense of security. I work to provide clients with a safe and attuned therapeutic experience. This gives you the space to look at old patterns of behaviour that are no longer serving you, supporting you to make healthier changes, moving you forward into a place of authenticity. My main training and theoretical background is Transactional Analysis & Relational Integrative Psychotherapy. I offer both short-term and long-term therapy for individuals, couples, and groups. Supervision

I completed my Supervision training at The Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy in January 2015. My work as a Supervisor is very much informed by Transactional Analysis & Relational Integrative theory. I supervise Counsellors & Psychotherapists from a wide range of theoretical approaches. I also provide Clinical & Reflective Supervision (Individual & Group) for various organisations. Relationship & Couples Counselling

I am a qualified relationship therapist, and have been working with couples, polyamorous & other relationship variations since 2013. I work with heterosexual relationships & those who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. Telephone & Online sessions available, both within the UK & Internationally. For further information, you can access this via the following link:

https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellors/claire-ratcliffe


Twitter: CR_Psych
Instagram: cr_psychotherapy

04/03/2026

Healing Relationships Podcast…

Are there any topics you would like me to discuss on my podcast?
A lot of what I talk about in the podcast is about healing your relationship with yourself and others.

There are different topics covered such as learning to be comfortable alone, building a relationship with yourself, learning how to trust yourself, why we choose the partners we choose, Inner child healing.

But I would be really interested to see if there are any other topics that you would like me to cover. I actually booked today off with the intention of recording several episodes but I am full of a cold which has got worse since recording this post….24 hours later and I have a full on cold. So I will see what I can get done this week.

I can see that people are downloading episodes every day and I can see which ones are the most popular.

I have a few ideas of what my next few episodes will be, but I would like to look at topics that you guys are interested in so please do let me know. 

23/02/2026

Polyamorous/Open Relationships.

It is a misconception that cheating and infidelity cannot happen in polyamorous and open relationships.

For polyamorous and open relationships to be fulfilling, what is required for all partners is communication. This is key.

It’s important to talk about the boundaries, the non-negotiables, and create a contract that works well for all partners that can be adjusted if necessary.

This does not mean that cheating cannot take place because of course it can.
And yes this can of course extend to
TV shows!


16/02/2026

You Can’t Stop Someone From Cheating… it might be that you feel that if you message them constantly when they are out, you check their phone, you quiz their friends.. that you can somehow stop them from cheating. The reality is, this is us trying to have control of the situation that feels out of our control.

You do not have control over whether or not somebody cheats on you. The question is, do you trust this person? If not, why not? Have they hurt you in the past? Or are these issues that you have around trust from experiences you’ve had in the past?



13/02/2026

The Vulnerability In Joy ..

We all want to feel and experience more joy, but it is such an incredibly vulnerable place to be especially if we have experienced a lot of trauma. Joy and happiness does not always feel safe. It’s something that leaves us feeling exposed and vulnerable and often the feeling can be that it will be taken from us in one way or another.

We need to learn how to show our system in small tolerable ways how to let joy in and allow ourselves to be present in the moment to experience the goodness that life has to offer us.

The small step might be doing this for just 30 seconds. And then that leads to 3 minutes, three hours and beyond.

Although Therapy helps us to process and heal from pain, suffering, grief, sadness, loneliness and allows us to be in our feelings… A lot of the work in Therapy is also showing ourselves how we can experience joy. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Which is why we need to take it in small steps

09/02/2026

Conflict Avoidant Couples…

If we are conflict avoidant, we will be unlikely to delve into in-depth conversations with our partner if it means there is a possibility for conflict and tension. Often we can fear that having conflict in a relationship means that that will be the end of our relationship so we will avoid it at all costs.

What we need to do is learn how to build the capacity in our nervous system to tolerate the discomfort of a disagreement so that we can expand and grow in the relationship and within ourselves.

This is how we learn to differentiate so we can experience our full selves and see our partner more fully too.

I apologise for Charlie getting frisky towards the end…

03/02/2026

New Podcast Episode!

Single Isn’t A Waiting Room - This Is Your Life 💛

How many experiences have you put off because you are single?

How many times have you said that you will only go to that restaurant or that holiday destination or have that experience when you have a partner?

In this episode I talk about

- What your thoughts, feelings and beliefs are about being single.

- What messages you received growing up about people who weren’t in relationships.

- Being single with children and how it feels to be a single parent.

- How you can take small steps to build capacity in your nervous system to tolerate the discomfort of trying new things by yourself and giving yourself the experiences you deserve.

Podcast: Healing Relationships

New Podcast Episode!Single Isn’t A Waiting Room - This Is Your Life 💛 How many experiences have you put off because you ...
03/02/2026

New Podcast Episode!

Single Isn’t A Waiting Room - This Is Your Life 💛

How many experiences have you put off because you are single?

How many times have you said that you will only go to that restaurant or that holiday destination or have that experience when you have a partner?

In this episode I talk about

- What your thoughts, feelings and beliefs are about being single.

- What messages you received growing up about people who weren’t in relationships.

- Being single with children and how it feels to be a single parent.

- How you can take small steps to build capacity in your nervous system to tolerate the discomfort of trying new things by yourself and giving yourself the experiences you deserve.

Podcast: Healing Relationships

03/02/2026

Who is choosing your romantic partners?

I talk a lot about our inner child and our younger parts. When it comes to looking for a potential romantic partner, sometimes the qualities and traits that we are drawn to is something that we really needed as a child or something that is familiar to us from our childhood. And it is our younger parts who choose the partner…

And then eventually it might not work out and we find ourselves back in that familiar territory of the ending of a relationship and wondering what went wrong…

Building the relationship with our inner child is so important because if they don’t feel safe, secure and supported by us… They will look outside of us for someone else to meet those needs. So looking at the pattern that we have experienced will give us useful information as to what is happening when we are choosing a romantic partner and what needs we are trying to meet.

01/02/2026

When being alone is hard… If you find it really difficult to spend time by yourself, alone without somebody to keep you company… Whether that is in person, on the phone, on FaceTime etc .. we need to learn how to build the capacity in our system to tolerate the initial discomfort of being by ourselves.

And we need to gradually build this in small, tolerable steps.

Taking big huge steps would be too much for our nervous system to tolerate… So it needs to be in small steps.

Eventually as you take more and more steps… You may find that you are beginning to feel more comfortable alone and eventually learn to really enjoy it 

31/01/2026

Learning To Be
Comfortable Alone… Finding Peace In Solitude. This is the most downloaded episode in my podcast: Healing Relationships.

If we feel anxious being by ourselves… If we don’t enjoy our own company… If we feel uncomfortable, unsafe in our own company then we might fill our days with lots of activities or seeing lots of people just so that we don’t have to be by ourselves.

This might also mean spending time with people you otherwise wouldn’t choose. 

It might feel too overwhelming for your system to just start spending lots of time by yourself. So it’s really important to build the capacity in our system to tolerate all the feelings that come with being alone… So that eventually we can actually enjoy our own company. 

28/01/2026

What is your breaking point?

Sometimes we wait until things are so bad before we seek support, before we access therapy, tell a friend or family member.

We wait until the day we have had today, is one we cannot bear to have tomorrow, and only then do we seek help.

If you look back at previous experiences you’ve had in your life .. how bad did things need to get before you got help?

We can learn from our past. We can learn about how we made choices then and how we can do it differently now.

Often we are just surviving and getting through it until things are ‘bad enough’ or ‘too bad’ .. but do you really need to keep doing that? Can you take one small step towards support now?

This is certainly a way of learning from your past self, and taking care of your future self. And you deserve that. 💛

PARTICIPANTS REQUIRED FOR A RESEARCH STUDY .. Exploring how autistic women use autobiographical memories to shape their ...
27/01/2026

PARTICIPANTS REQUIRED FOR A RESEARCH STUDY ..

Exploring how autistic women use autobiographical memories to shape their sense of self..

I’m posting this for a colleague of mine who isn’t on Facebook. Please see the details below, and if you are interested, please get in touch with Amanda directly.

Thank you

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