Shirley Brocklehurst Psychotherapy

Home
Shirley Brocklehurst Psychotherapy

Gentle, accepting therapy for adults ready to find their voice, set boundaries, and release old patterns.

The connection between mind and body is fundamental to my work, which recognises that what happens in one affects the other, acknowledging that movement embraces the psychological and transpersonal (spiritual) dimensions as well as the physical. I seek to create therapeutic change in the lives of individuals by addressing emotional, physical, mental and social aspects through dance, movement and b

ody awareness. I am a registered Dance Movement Psychotherapist with the Association for Dance Movement Psychotherapy (ADMP UK), which is a member of the Humanistic Integrative Psychotherapy College of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP).

30/01/2026

🌿Let Yourself Receive Kindness🌿

If love once felt conditional, accepting care can feel uncomfortable. Start small: allow someone to help you with something simple, or give yourself permission to rest without “earning” it.

Receiving is part of healing.

26/01/2026

🌿 The Moment You Realise You Don’t Have to Earn Love 🌿

For many who experienced childhood trauma, love felt conditional - based on behaving well, staying quiet, achieving, or putting others first.

As adults, this can lead to feeling responsible for everyone’s emotions and believing that your needs are “too much.”
One of the most powerful healing moments is realising:
• You don’t have to earn gentleness.
• You don’t have to earn rest.
• You don’t have to earn love.
Therapy can help you feel this truth in your body, not just understand it in your mind. Slowly, you begin to recognise that worth is something you are, not something you perform.

🌿 Where in your life do you still feel you have to “deserve” care instead of simply receiving it?🌿

23/01/2026

🌿Notice the Voice You Use with Yourself🌿

That inner critic often echoes old voices you had to survive. When you catch yourself speaking harshly, try softening the tone - even just 10%.

Small shifts change the emotional climate inside you.

19/01/2026

🌿Relearning How to Speak to Yourself🌿

The voice in your head often echoes the voices you grew up with.
If those voices were harsh, demanding, or dismissive, it makes sense that your inner voice feels the same.

You may tell yourself you should be coping better, doing more, or “getting over it” - even when you’re already carrying so much.

But here’s the truth:
Self-worth grows from the tone you use with yourself.
Replacing criticism with compassion - even for a moment - is part of learning to feel enough.

This isn’t about positive thinking. It’s about slowly changing the emotional climate inside you.

🌿 What would you say to yourself today if you spoke with the tenderness you needed as a child?🌿

16/01/2026

🌿Ground Yourself in the Present Moment🌿

Overthinking is often an old survival strategy. To ease it, gently anchor to the present: notice a colour in the room, feel your feet on the floor, or take one steady breath.

Grounding reminds your mind you’re here, not back there.

12/01/2026

🌿Adult Overthinking Often Begins in Childhood🌿

If you grew up feeling unsafe, unheard, or unsure how adults would react, your nervous system may have learned to stay on alert.

That vigilance can turn into overthinking in adulthood - replaying conversations, worrying about upsetting others, or preparing for the “worst case scenario,” even when you’re safe now.

You’re not “too sensitive.” You’re not “overreacting.” Your mind is doing what it learned to do to keep you safe.

Feeling “enough” begins when you realise that those old strategies were clever… and that now, you can gently teach your mind new ways to feel secure.

🌿 When you catch yourself overthinking, what fear from the past might your mind be trying to protect you from?🌿

09/01/2026

🌿 Give Yourself Permission to Pause🌿

When you grew up always needing to be “on guard” or pleasing others, pausing can feel wrong. But a simple moment of stillness helps your mind remember that you're safe now.

Even one slow breath counts.

05/01/2026

🌿The Slow Work of Feeling “Enough”🌿

Many people who grew up with criticism, emotional neglect, or pressure to “be good” learned early on that their worth depended on how well theMany people who grew up with criticism, emotional neglect, or pressure to “be good” learned early on that their worth depended on how well the performed.
As adults, this can show up as constant self-doubt, overthinking, or feeling like you’re always falling short - even when others see you doing more than enough.

Learning to feel “enough” isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about gently unlearning the idea that your worth is something you must earn. Over time, therapy can help you notice the places where you still judge yourself the way others once did - and begin to soften those old patterns.

🌿 Where in your life today do you still feel you have to “prove” your worth?🌿

02/01/2026

As a new year begins, gentle movement offers us a quiet way in—one that doesn’t demand reinvention or resolve, but invites listening. Instead of asking what should I change?, movement therapy asks a softer question: what is already here in my body, and how can I meet it with kindness?

Small, attentive movements help the nervous system feel safe enough to let go of what it has been holding. A slow shoulder roll, a subtle sway, a moment of pausing to feel your feet on the ground—these are not insignificant. They are ways of telling the body that it doesn’t need to rush to keep up with the calendar.

In the new year, movement can be a companion rather than a goal. Some days it may look like stretching toward possibility; other days it may simply be resting in what is. Both are meaningful. When we move with curiosity instead of pressure, the body often reveals its own quiet wisdom about timing, pacing, and readiness.

Let this year be one where progress is measured in moments of ease, breath returning to the belly, and a growing sense of trust in yourself. Gentle movement, repeated with care, can become a steady thread of support—helping you arrive in the year not all at once, but gradually, honestly, and at home in your body.

29/12/2025

As the year comes to a close, there is an invitation to soften rather than summarize. Before the mind reaches for conclusions, the body may be quietly releasing what it has carried - long days, short breaths, moments of effort and moments of endurance. Nothing needs to be neatly understood for this letting go to begin.

You might notice where the body naturally wants to rest now. Perhaps the shoulders drop a little, the jaw loosens, or the breath finds a slower rhythm. These small shifts are the body’s way of marking time, of acknowledging all that has moved through you this year without asking for a story about it.

Endings in somatic practice are not about closure so much as settling. Allow yourself to feel the support beneath you, the steadiness of the ground, the simple fact that you are here. The nervous system learns from these moments of safety and pause, storing them as quiet resources for what comes next.

As the year gently exhales, you don’t need to carry everything forward. Some things can be placed down. Some can be left unnamed. Let your body choose what stays and what goes, trusting its intelligence. From this place of warmth and ease, the next moment - and the next year - can arrive in its own time.

14/12/2025

24 days. 24 gentle invitations to come home to your body.

As the year winds down, it’s easy to get caught in doing, planning, and holding space for everyone else. This December, I’m sharing a simple way to pause — a moment each day to breathe, feel, and return to presence.

Address

Telephone

+447760428554

Website

https://www.shirleybrocklehurst.uk/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Shirley Brocklehurst Psychotherapy posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Practice

Send a message to Shirley Brocklehurst Psychotherapy:

Want your practice to be the top-listed Clinic?

Country:

City:

Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP)

DMP recognises body movement as an implicit and expressive instrument of communication and expression. The intrinsic connection between mind and body is key to my work, which combines science and clinical knowledge with art and creative process. Each session looks unique depending on the client(s), and setting.

During a session, I will usually incorporate a variety of techniques and expressive modalities, as well as verbal psychotherapy methods, to engage clients in a relational creative process, guiding and intervening in ways that best meet their needs and using body movement and dance to address key areas of function: emotional, cognitive, physical, social and spiritual (transpersonal).

The act of simply moving together in each other’s presence connects us. DMP provides the therapeutic space to increase the client’s awareness of the mind-body connection and the power for them to make decisions about the direction of the experience. This embodied approach to therapy serves many purposes, one of which is to increase the clients’ experience of embodiment which I hope they will take with them into their everyday lives and help to increase their self-confidence and their ability to express or manage overwhelming feelings or thoughts.