About Rino

Hello, and welcome. I'm Rino, a trauma-informed counsellor, MBACP and MNCPS (Acc.). I work online with adults across the UK, meeting weekly for 50 minutes, and all you need is a quiet space where you won't be interrupted and a reliable connection.

Most of what follows is about how I work and who it tends to help. If you'd rather just talk, we start with a free 20 minute call, a chance to ask anything and see whether it feels right.

Who I work with

Most of the people I work with are not falling apart. They are functioning, often very well. The job is fine. The relationships are fine. Nothing is visibly wrong.

But underneath, something feels off. They feel anxious, or flat, or disconnected. They react in ways they do not understand. They apologise for things that were never theirs. They cannot rest, even when there is nothing left to do. They cope in ways that used to work and have started costing them.

Often they have had therapy before and found it useful without it quite reaching this. They understand their childhood. They can explain it clearly and calmly. It has not changed what their body does on a Thursday afternoon.

Insight is not the same as change. Understanding why you flinch does not stop the flinch.

You are not broken. Your nervous system learned to protect you, and it is still doing its job, even when the original threat is long gone.

What I mean by trauma

Most people hear the word trauma and picture one terrible event. A crash. An assault. Something with a date attached.

That is one kind of trauma. It is not the kind most of the people I work with bring.

Complex trauma is what happens when the difficulty was not an event but a pattern. Years of it, usually starting young, usually inside a relationship you could not leave. A parent whose mood set the temperature of the house. Love that came with conditions. Being needed rather than seen. Often nothing you could point to and call abuse. Nothing anyone else would have noticed. Just a long stretch of childhood spent working out what kept you safe, and then doing that.

Children in that situation are clever. They learn fast. Read the room before you enter it. Go quiet. Be useful. Need very little. Get it right the first time.

Those are not character flaws. They were the correct answer to the question you were being asked.

The problem is that the question changed and the answer did not. The solution outlived the situation. So you are forty-five, sitting in a meeting with people who are not a threat, and your body is still scanning the room.

That is complex trauma. Not a memory that follows you around. A way of being in the world that you learned before you were old enough to choose it.

How I work

Slowly.

I do not push for answers, go looking for the worst thing that ever happened to you, or assume I know what is going on. With complex trauma, speed is usually the enemy. A nervous system that spent years bracing does not soften because someone asks it to.

So we work at the pace your body will actually allow. We pay attention to what shows up in it, and to what is hard to stay with. That is usually where the real work begins.

There is one more part, and it is the part that surprises people. What you learned, you did not learn from a book or an argument. You learned it in a relationship, when you were small, from someone whose reactions you could not predict. That is where the lesson went in. It tends to be where it comes back out.

Not by talking about that relationship, although we will. By being in one where the old rules do not apply. Where you are not reading me for signs. Where going quiet is allowed, and so is not going quiet. It is slower than insight, and it is the part that holds.

You do not need to arrive knowing what the problem is. You do not need a diagnosis, or a crisis, or a story bad enough to qualify. If something feels heavier than it should, that is enough.

My training

I hold a Level 4 Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling (CPCAB). I am a Registered Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and an Accredited Registrant of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society. Both are registers accredited by the Professional Standards Authority, which means I work to a published ethical framework and am accountable to it.

Before private practice I worked in addiction recovery and hospice bereavement care, alongside a counselling clinic. I have regular clinical supervision with a complex trauma specialist and ongoing professional development in trauma-focused practice.

A soft next step

My practice is full at the moment and I am running a waitlist. If you recognise yourself in any of this, you can add your name to it. No pressure and no commitment, just a way to stay connected for when the time feels right.