Relational trauma-informed psychotherapy in Reading, Berkshire and online
Thoughtful, carefully paced support for when insight alone hasn't shifted what you're carrying
Psychotherapy can help when things feel stuck, overwhelming, or hard to shift — including anxiety, shutdown, dissociation, relationship difficulties, and patterns that may not shift through insight alone
Paolo Imbalzano
Psychotherapist & Clinical Supervisor
Relational psychotherapy · Trauma-informed practice · Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) · Sensorimotor Psychotherapy · ILF neurofeedback
In person in Shinfield, Reading, Berkshire · Online across the UK
UKCP-registered Psychotherapist · BACP-registered member · CTA-P
I offer relational, trauma-informed psychotherapy for adults living with anxiety, overwhelm, shutdown, dissociation, relationship difficulties, low mood, chronic stress, and patterns of coping that can feel hard to change.
My approach is grounded in relationship and informed by trauma, attachment, and the nervous system. It may include both talking therapy and body-aware approaches, always in a way that is thoughtful, responsive, and tailored to you.
I am often most helpful when insight is part of the picture, but not the whole of it — especially when the difficulty shows up under stress, in relationships, or in the body.
We begin with what feels most important now, and go from there at a pace that feels manageable.
A gentle starting point
You may be here because something feels persistently difficult: anxiety that does not settle, emotional overwhelm, shutdown, disconnection, exhaustion, or relationship difficulties that keep repeating even when part of you understands them.
You may already have spent a long time trying to understand why things are as they are, and still find that something in you reacts before you can choose differently. Sometimes insight does not reach the places that still react.
You might recognise some of these experiences:
part of you understands what is happening, but your responses still do not shift
you find yourself pulled into anxiety, shutdown, or hypervigilance, or feel disconnected from yourself and others
you feel on edge, overwhelmed, or unable to settle
the same relationship dynamics keep repeating, even when you try hard to do things differently
Sometimes these difficulties are linked to trauma, chronic stress, attachment wounds, or long periods of overwhelm. Sometimes they show up in quieter ways: chronic tension, people-pleasing, emotional shutdown, dissociation, hyper-independence, or a body that still expects to protect itself.
These responses are not signs of weakness. They are often ways the mind and body learned to cope, adapt, or stay safe.
Therapy can offer a space to understand these responses with care, without forcing change too quickly. Over time, that can create more room to think, feel, choose, and relate differently.
"I'd spent years understanding why I reacted the way I did. Working with Paolo was the first time something actually shifted." — Former client (anonymised)
Considering therapy?
If some of this resonates, you are welcome to book a free 20-minute consultation.
We can talk about what feels difficult, what you are hoping for, and whether this approach seems like a good fit.
There is no pressure to continue.
How I work
Therapy shaped around safety, capacity, and deeper change
If you're considering therapy, you may be carrying something that feels hard to name, or that life has simply become harder to manage than it once was. Whatever brings you here, the work is shaped around you — your history, your patterns, your pace.
My work is grounded in relational psychotherapy and informed by trauma, attachment, and how the nervous system holds experience.
The therapeutic relationship is central to how I work. I see it not simply as the setting for therapy, but as one of the main ways therapy happens — a place where patterns can be noticed with safety, understood, and gradually experienced differently.
Together, we make sense of your experience. This means attending not only to conscious understanding, but also to what happens emotionally, physically, and relationally — the parts that don't always have words yet.
I work in a carefully paced, individually shaped way — what clinicians call formulation-led. Therapy is built around your particular history, needs, and capacity, rather than fitted to a fixed formula.
I do not tend to rush toward the deepest material. Often, the first task is to help life feel more manageable in the present: building stability, strengthening regulation, and creating enough safety for deeper work to become possible.
In trauma therapy, stabilisation is not a detour from the work. It is often part of the work itself.
Slow is often faster.
Over time, this can support not only greater understanding, but deeper and more lasting change — more capacity, more agency, and a growing sense that mind and body no longer have to work quite so hard to stay safe.
From the Reflections
Why insight alone is not always enough
Many people who come to therapy already understand their patterns well. They can describe where their anxiety comes from, recognise what triggers them, and explain how earlier experiences shaped the way they now respond. And yet something still doesn't shift.
This article explores why — and what therapy may need to include alongside insight.
If you would like to explore further
You may find these pages a helpful next step:
Work with me ›
A simple overview of the main ways of working together.
Symptoms & experiences ›
A fuller overview of the kinds of difficulties this work may help with.
Trauma ›
More about how I work with trauma, the nervous system, and deeper therapeutic process.
About me ›
More about my approach, background, and the therapeutic modalities I integrate.