Elena Carrera

Elena Carrera is warm and empathetic. As a bilingual trainee psychotherapist, she provides a safe, non-judgemental and collaborative environment in which clients can explore their helpful and unhelpful feelings, thoughts and beliefs (in English and/or Spanish). Elena takes a holistic, integrative approach, rooted in Contemporary Psychotherapy, to encourage clients to trust their intuition, identify the outcomes they want to achieve, and let go of what they no longer need. She also has extensive experience of body-centred approaches to understanding emotions: connecting with our feelings and with the parts of our body where we store memories of how we have felt can help to release unhelpful patterns.

In her psychotherapeutic practice, Elena provides the opportunity for clients to listen to their own bodies and to communicate verbally and non-verbally. Listening from different perceptual positions to the (verbal and non-verbal) messages they tell themselves, clients may identify unmet needs, related to different parts of their experience; they are then encouraged to acknowledge these (sometimes conflicting) needs and to allow the different parts of themselves to be heard, to feel validated and to negotiate with one another. Clients who find themselves in situations of conflict, can get in touch with specific details of how they feel in these situations and can also practise observing themselves and others in empathetic, non-judgemental ways.

Elena is interested in working with clients who are going through bodily changes, such as pregnancy, the menopause and other life transitions that affect our minds and the way we feel. Besides the joy of having worked with young people in Higher Education for almost four decades, she also brings to her psychotherapeutic practice her experience of dealing with a range of challenges related to chronic illness, fatigue, pain, anxiety and stress. She is a member of BPS (since 2012) and UKCP (since 2024), working towards the Advanced Diploma in Contemporary Psychotherapy. She is currently on placement as a counsellor within The Awareness Centre’s NHS counselling service in Lambeth.