Samantha Merry specialises in trauma,  PTSD,  burnout, dysfunctional family dynamics, and dissociation as a response to overwhelming experience. She works with adults in longer-term psychodynamic psychotherapy in Bromley, South East London.

My clinical work has deepened over time around three interconnected areas: trauma and dissociation, complex family dynamics, and therapeutic writing. More recently, the psychological dimensions of menopause have become a significant strand of my practice. Each of these reflects sustained clinical training and research interest, not just a passing focus.

Trauma

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. They notice the effects, a tendency to withdraw, to over-manage emotions, to feel on alert even when life is calm, without yet connecting those patterns to their origins.

My approach to trauma is psychodynamic and relational, working with what’s present in the room as well as what you bring from your history. I work with the full range of trauma presentations: single-incident PTSD, complex and developmental trauma, and the relational patterns that chronic early adversity leaves behind. Dissociation is an area of particular specialist interest and training. I work with adults across the full dissociative spectrum, from mild and common experiences of unreality or disconnection through to complex dissociative disorders including OSDD and Dissociative Identity Disorder. I hold the SCID-D assessment qualification, the most comprehensive and reliable clinical instrument for assessing dissociative symptoms, and I bring specialist training the European Society for Trauma and Dissociation, and the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. My doctoral research at the University of Chester focuses on trauma and psychological wellbeing.

I also offer clinical supervision to therapists working with trauma and dissociation, including those encountering complex presentations for the first time.

 

Complex Family Dynamics

Early family experience shapes us in ways that often only become visible in adulthood, when we notice familiar patterns repeating in our current relationships or find ourselves carrying something we can’t quite name. I’m particularly interested in how relational patterns formed in families, around attachment, emotional availability, role allocation, and the management of difficult feelings, continue to influence adult life long after the original circumstances have changed.

This work is often relevant for people who grew up with emotionally unavailable, narcissistic, or highly critical parents, or who took on roles, peacemaker, caretaker, scapegoat, that didn’t belong to them. It’s also relevant for those whose early experience was less obviously difficult but who nonetheless carry a persistent sense of not quite fitting, of performing capability while privately feeling unseen or unsure of themselves.

The therapeutic relationship is central to this work. How you relate to me in the room, what you expect, what you protect against, what you find difficult to bring, tends to mirror the relational patterns formed earlier. That makes those patterns available to understand and work with in real time, which is where the most meaningful shifts often happen.

The Psychological Dimensions of Menopause

Perimenopause and menopause bring hormonal changes that affect mood, sleep, cognition, and energy in ways that are frequently more significant than expected and less well supported than they deserve to be. The psychological and relational dimensions of this transition, shifts in identity, the emergence of grief, the intensification of anxiety or emotional dysregulation, receive far less attention than the physical symptoms.

I bring a particular clinical and research interest in this area. My MA dissertation explored the use of expressive writing with women navigating significant life transitions, and I have facilitated therapeutic writing groups specifically for women during the menopausal transition. I work with women at all stages, including those experiencing early or surgical menopause, and I’m experienced in working with the intersection of menopause and earlier trauma, where hormonal changes can intensify previously managed responses.

Writing as Therapy

Writing has been part of my own reflective practice for many years, and it is also an area of formal training, facilitation experience, and academic research. I’ve seen how powerful it can be as a companion to therapy, offering a route into experience that talking alone doesn’t always reach.For some people, writing helps when words are hard to speak aloud. For others it offers a space for reflection between sessions, a way of staying in contact with the work when the room isn’t available. I use a range of approaches alongside standard talking therapy, including free writing, letter writing, poetry, and reflective memoir, none of which requires any prior writing experience or ability.

Writing is always optional. Some people find it immediately useful, others prefer to keep the work entirely verbal, and both are entirely fine. If you’re curious about whether it might add something to your therapy, that’s worth exploring together.I also run therapeutic writing groups, both online and in person in Bromley, and offer writing-based workshops for organisations and community settings. You can find more on the therapeutic writing page.