Samantha Merry specialises in trauma and dissociation, complex family dynamics, burnout and disconnection, and the psychological dimensions of menopause and midlife. She works with adults in longer-term psychodynamic psychotherapy in Bromley, South East London.

My clinical work has deepened over time around four interconnected areas: trauma and dissociation, complex family dynamics, burnout and disconnection, and menopause and midlife. These areas overlap constantly in practice. Trauma and dissociation are often bound up with complex family dynamics, both in what happened growing up and in patterns still active in current relationships. Burnout and disconnection can grow out of either, unresolved trauma or family roles that never allowed space to rest. Menopause and midlife bring their own pressures, and earlier trauma often intensifies them, sometimes tipping into burnout. Each area reflects sustained clinical training and research interest.

Trauma and Dissociation

Trauma is one of the most common threads in the work people bring to therapy, and one of the most varied in how it presents. It may have arrived as a single acute event, or it may have accumulated quietly over years, in families, relationships, or environments that were consistently difficult or unsafe. Many people I work with don’t initially identify with the word “trauma” at all.

I work across the full range of trauma presentations, from single-incident PTSD through to complex and developmental trauma. I have a particular specialist interest in dissociation and work with adults across the full dissociative spectrum, including complex dissociative presentations and Dissociative Identity Disorder. I hold the SCID-D qualification, the most comprehensive clinical instrument for assessing dissociation.  I draw on this training to inform my clinical work with clients rather than offering standalone assessments. I have also had specialist training from the Pottergate Centre, the European Society for Trauma and Dissociation, and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust.

My approach is psychodynamic and trauma-informed. That means I understand your responses as intelligent adaptations to difficult circumstances, and we work at a pace your nervous system can tolerate.

Complex Family Dynamics

Family relationships are often where we first learn, and sometimes struggle, to connect. I am particularly interested in how early family patterns continue to shape adult relationships, self-esteem, and emotional life. You might have grown up with emotionally distant, unpredictable, or highly critical parents, or found yourself in the role of caretaker, peacemaker, or the one who was always expected to cope.

Together we look at how those roles and expectations still shape you, even when your life looks very different now. This work can be meaningful for people who appear capable and composed on the surface but privately feel unseen, anxious, or unsure where they belong. Understanding these patterns brings clarity, and the possibility of relating in ways that feel more authentic.This work draws on training in psychodynamic psychotherapy as well as attachment theory, both of which locate family relationships at the centre of how identity and emotional patterns form.

Burnout and Disconnection

Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse. Many people I see are still meeting deadlines, showing up for their families, and appearing entirely capable, while feeling flat, low in mood, and increasingly disconnected from their work and the people around them. The exhaustion can build slowly, through years of overextending at work, through the demands of family life, or through the effort of masking that undiagnosed or newly identified neurodivergence often requires.

I work with the disconnection underneath the burnout, not just the exhaustion on the surface. That often means understanding what the tiredness has been protecting you from feeling, and building a slower, more sustainable relationship to work, family, and yourself. Recovery here is rarely about doing less. It’s about reconnecting with what matters, at a pace that doesn’t ask you to perform wellness before you feel it.

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