Bronwyn Silva

Psychotherapist

About me

I am an experienced integrative psychotherapist with a deep commitment to trauma-informed, attachment-focused work. I am here for the the very particular, unique, irreducible story of each person I have the privilege to work with.

Methods

My work brings together scientifically grounded methods to support lasting change. My approach draws on EMDR, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT/CBT), Clinical Hypnotherapy and somatic and attachment-informed practice. These are not interchangable tools applied at random but rather they are lenses, each offering a different quality of light on the same landscape. Together, they allow me to work with both the story and the body that holds it.

My Practice

At the heart of my practice is a deep belief that healing, self-acceptance, authenticity, and growth are possible for everyone, without exception.We don't arrive in adulthood as blank pages. Long before we put words to our experiences, we were already learning: what closeness feels like, whether the world is safe, if its okay to be who we are and how much of who we are we are allowed to show. These early lessons, informed and absorbed in relationship and wired into us are written into our nervous systems and become the architecture of our inner life. They shape how we love, how we grieve, how we fight, how we please and how we disappear.
When things like shock, loss, relational wounding or the slow erosion of chronic stress disrupt that architecture, the effects ripple outward in ways that can be hard to trace. We may find ourselves repeating patterns we don't understand, feeling disconnected from people we love, or carrying a nameless weight that no amount of reasoning seems to shift.
This is the territory I work in.The work we do together is always trauma-informed, attuned to the nervous system, and sensitive to the impact of past experiences on present difficulties.Sessions are relaxed and informal and you are certainly not expected to do all the talking. There will be plenty of dialogue and I am here to to guide the process and offer you a non-judgemental space to explore your inner and outer world. My hope is you will gain tools that you can best use to move towards the life you love.

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing deserves particular mention. It is one of the most robustly evidenced treatments available for trauma, working directly with the way distressing memories become frozen in the nervous system. Where talk alone cannot reach, EMDR often can, gently, and at a pace that is always yours to set.
It is a gentle but often transformative process that is unhurried. There is no need to understand the process or to do and say the right thing. Your experience met with openness and curiosity to find your way toward greater freedom, coherence, and connection.

Relationship work

Our earliest relationships inform everything. In those first attachments, we learn whether we are lovable, whether others can be trusted, whether closeness is safe. We learn to reach, or to withdraw. To appease, or to fight. To need, or to need nothing at all. We learn by keenly observing not only how our primary people love us but how they love themselves and others.
And then this learning travels with us into our partnerships, our friendships, our families, woven into all the decisions we make about who we are and what we deserve and are capable of. They become the internal relationship we keep with ourselves. Often they operate beneath awareness, shaping the texture of our closest connections in ways that can feel bewildering or beyond our control.I work with individuals and couples navigating this terrain. Whether you are caught in a cycle of conflict that never quite resolves, struggling with distance or disconnection, recovering from betrayal or rupture, or simply trying to understand why you keep arriving at the same place.I find both meaningful and hopeful.Relational healing rarely happens in isolation. For healing to happen, patterns need to be noticed, even better in real time. The therapeutic relationship creates a condition of safety where how you relate, where you close down can be met with curiosity and what becomes possible when the conditions for safety are genuinely present.For couples, I draw on Relational Life Therapy and ACT, working with both the dynamic between you and the individual histories each partner brings to it.

Other Experiences I support

Relational trauma, attachment wounds, and patterns rooted in early experience
Trauma, PTSD, and complex trauma — including emotional and physical abuse
Relationship difficulties, couples work, and family rupture
Parenting
Depression, anxiety, and chronic stress
Low self-worth, shame, and fragmented identity
Grief, loss, and bereavement
PMDD, perimenopause, menopause, fertility, and postnatal wellbeing
Panic, phobias, and OCD
ADHD and neurodiverse presentations
Chronic illness, body-mind conditions, and medically unexplained symptoms
Life transitions, meaning-making, and questions of purpose

Contact me

My in person practice is based in Ashburton, Devon.
I also offer sessions online.[email protected]

I am an accredited member of both the National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society and the National Hypnotherapy Society.