Isla Donaldson, NCPS

Isla Donaldson helps people reconnect with themselves and use their present experience as a resource for living, supporting renewed balance, connection and meaning. She creates a collaborative therapeutic space that centres on what matters most to each person, moving alongside them with attentive presence, practical support and gentle challenge as they process difficult emotions and memories.

Her work welcomes the full range of human experience without judgement. Through fostering self-awareness, self-acceptance and an embodied sense of safety, Isla supports people to develop greater resilience, clearer self-trust and renewed hope for the future. Her approach foregrounds the therapeutic relationship as a primary vehicle for change and is guided by each client’s unique needs and pace.

Practically, Isla draws on person-centred and relational principles alongside somatic and trauma-focused methods that use in-the-moment bodily sensations as pathways to understanding, emotion processing and nervous system regulation. Over the past five years she has worked with adults and young people on issues including low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, grief and loss, and has particular experience supporting people who have experienced trauma or abuse or who are coping with suicidal ideation or self-harming behaviours.

Her formal training includes a first-class BA in Humanistic Counselling Practice and ongoing professional development in areas such as somatics and embodiment, integrative somatic trauma therapy, Polyvagal Theory, systemic trauma, Internal Family Systems, attachment theory, sex and sexuality, boundaries and consent, safeguarding, applied suicide intervention and online therapy. She also holds the credential NCPS, a recognised professional counselling credential.

Isla describes her practice as flexible and responsive to individual circumstances, and she is open to discussing the therapeutic process and what someone would like to be different in their life. She meets people with presence, respect and a focus on practical, embodied ways of working through difficult experiences.