Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing
MY APPROACH
Over nearly three decades of working with people, I’ve developed a broad and integrative set of therapeutic skills, drawing on different approaches to understanding human experience, behaviour, and change.
I don’t believe that any single therapeutic approach can adequately address the complexity of being human. My work draws on different ways of understanding the person, recognising that our physical, emotional, psychological and relational experiences are deeply interconnected.
My work is integrative. I track what is happening cognitively, emotionally, relationally and somatically. I pay attention to the nervous system, the body and the wider family and systemic dynamics that may be present.
While we talk, I pay attention to your emotional responses, to what your body and nervous system are doing, and to how much difficult material you can take on at that moment.
Part of my job is knowing when to explore, when to slow down and when you simply need to be heard.
Some of what we look at may be complex, and I will help you make sense of it in plain, understandable terms.
We work together, at a pace that respects you, because therapeutic change cannot be forced.
I am interested in more than understanding: I hope you come to experience yourself, your relationships and your life differently.
What integrative means
I am not only an EMDR practitioner or only a somatic therapist, and my shamanic and energetic work rests on substantial clinical experience.
I bring these different dimensions together.
It is a little like the difference between seeing a doctor who concentrates on one part of the picture and seeing one who looks at how several aspects of your health connect.
That comparison is about breadth of perspective, and it is not a claim that every method I use has the same evidence behind it.
Four ways of understanding a person
Each of these shows me something the others can miss.
Clinical and psychological
I am an occupational therapist, and I have worked for nearly three decades in psychiatric settings, rehabilitation and private practice.
That experience, with my training in EMDR and EFT and through Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry programme, is the ground my clinical judgement stands on.
It helps me recognise what I am seeing, judge how much you can take on at a given time, and know when a different kind of help is needed.
Somatic and nervous-system work
Gabor Maté speaks about how our conscious recall of experiences is limited, while the body may continue to carry the imprint of experiences we cannot consciously remember.
Our bodies can hold patterns of tension, protection and automatic responses shaped by earlier experiences, even when we have little or no conscious memory of what contributed to them.
Somatic approaches allow us to work with these embodied patterns, accessing aspects of our experience that may not be readily available through thought, language or cognitive understanding alone. This creates opportunities for processing and change that don’t depend entirely on being able to remember, explain or make sense of everything that has happened to us.
My training in TRE® and other somatic approaches lets me work with those responses directly, alongside what we talk about.
Family systems and relationships
None of us develops alone, so I consider the family you grew up in, the roles you took on there and the relationships you are in now.
Family Constellations is one of the ways I use to make those roles, loyalties and influences across generations easier to see.
It can show why you find yourself in the same position with different people.
Transpersonal, shamanic and energetic perspectives
My work also draws on training and experience in shamanic and energetic approaches, alongside a transpersonal understanding of human experience that recognises dimensions of identity, meaning, consciousness and personal transformation beyond conventional psychological frameworks.
Over the years, I’ve also developed my own evolving transpersonal and ontological framework for understanding human experience and the process of becoming. This has emerged through my clinical work, personal exploration and a deep curiosity about human nature, consciousness and the ways we grow and change.
Where relevant and meaningful to the individual, I bring these perspectives into the therapeutic process, recognising that our experiences of ourselves and the world can extend beyond what we can understand through psychological or cognitive approaches alone.
You do not need to hold any spiritual belief to work with me, and this side of my work is there only if you want it.
Honest about the differences
These ways of working are not all the same kind of thing, and I think it is right to say so.
Some of what I do is clinical: my work as an occupational therapist, and trauma-focused methods such as EMDR.
Some are broader therapeutic frameworks, such as somatic work, TRE®, EFT, Family Constellations and my training through Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry programme, which have less formal research behind them and which I use as ways of working and understanding.
The transpersonal, shamanic and energetic work is exploratory, and I do not present it as clinical treatment.
I do not use every method with every person.
What I suggest depends on what you bring, your circumstances, your preferences and what I judge to be appropriate, and we decide together.
What matters is less the number of methods than the judgement about which of them, if any, fits the person in front of me.
Insight and deeper change
Much of how we respond is not decided by conscious thought.
It is shaped by earlier experience, emotional learning, attachment, trauma, family dynamics, beliefs and the ways the nervous system has adapted.
You may know that you are safe and still feel anxious, know that you deserve rest and still feel uneasy when you stop working, or have explored your childhood at length and still have the same automatic reactions.
I sometimes call this the operating system beneath conscious intention.
These responses usually began as sensible adaptations, and some of them have since become restrictive.
Reflection and insight keep an important place in my work.
Some difficulties may also benefit from approaches that engage emotion, the body and the nervous system, and this is where working integratively helps.
I do not promise a particular result.
What I work towards is more flexibility, more freedom in how you respond and a less automatic relationship with old patterns.
I want what we come to understand to show, where possible, in how your ordinary days feel.
Beyond coping
Helping people in real psychological distress is an essential part of my work.
I am also interested in something beyond the easing of symptoms, which is how free a person is to experience their own life.
Many people become very good at coping, performing and managing responsibility.
Being able to function in life is not the same as being free to experience it.
Therapy will not remove every difficulty or make anyone permanently happy.
It may help you to be less governed by fear, responsibility, shame, guilt or self-criticism, and to have more choice.
It may leave more room for pleasure, connection, creativity, rest and spontaneity, and for treating yourself with less harshness.
It may bring the way you live closer to what you value.
Ways of working
Each of these has its own page, which says what it is and how I use it.
Trauma tension release exercises
SHAMANIC ENERGY HEALING
An Ancient Science
ONE TO ONE THERAPEUTIC WORK
Return to Wholeness
Emotional Freedom Technique
Therapeutic method which draws on elements of family systems therapy
At a glance
- Who
- Renée Shearing, occupational therapist, BSc (OT); HPCSA OT 0032638; qualified in 1997, nearly three decades of clinical experience in South Africa, the United Kingdom and Australia
- Training
- EMDR, Certified Level 2 TRE® Practitioner (TRE LLC, 2014), Family Constellations, EFT, Motivational Interviewing, shamanic energy work (Four Winds), Compassionate Inquiry (Gabor Maté’s programme)
- Ways of working
- One to One Therapeutic Work, EMDR, TRE®, EFT, Family Constellations, Shamanic Energy Healing
- Where
- 7 Constantia Main Rd, Wynberg, Cape Town
- Online
- Online sessions from anywhere, in any country, by Zoom or another platform the client prefers; available for sessions Monday to Friday, 07:00 to 18:00, South Africa Standard Time (SAST, UTC+2)
- Sessions
- 50 minutes, individual; US$250 per session.
Clients living in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa: R2,000 per session. - Office hours
- Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 17:30
- To book
- WhatsApp, renee.shearing@gmail.com or the Contact page
- Last updated