Meet Emma

Hello, my name is Emma and welcome to my page!

Long before becoming a medical trauma and chronic illness therapist, I suffered from chronic illness myself. Since childhood, I have dealt with incontinence and painful urine retention. As a child, I was told I would grow out of it, but as an adult, a consultant once asked if I was sure I didn’t have children, suggesting that might be the cause of my bladder issues (I hadn’t, and I think I would have remembered if I did). When I broke my elbow in three places, the doctor was surprised that I didn’t find it painful. For me, it was mild compared to my PMS pain.
As an emergency care nurse, I witnessed people and their families go through life-changing medical events, whether from accidents, heart attacks, strokes, or receiving a life-altering diagnosis. In emergency care, our job was to stabilize patients and move them on. We rarely saw what happened next. Occasionally, we’d get glimpses of their lives outside the hospital—people returning with fears that their pain might indicate cancer recurrence or heart issues, or still waiting for a specialist, desperate for answers. In acute care, we treat the immediate problem, but often, patients are sent back into the world with more waiting lists and few answers.
Finding specialists who listened and understood was crucial for me in managing my physical conditions, while therapy helped me with self-criticism, body image, and the grief that came with them. Therapy cannot change waiting lists or the fact that your body or abilities have changed forever. It cannot change that you have received a terminal, life-changing, or maybe even no diagnosis at all. But it can help you with processing grief, coping strategies, boundaries, and acceptance.