Hello, I'm Lisa
The work I do now exists because of the life I lived.
I work with women and children living through coercive control, post separation abuse and the pressures that come when systems meant to protect them misunderstand their reality.
Because I have lived inside those systems myself.
And I know how quickly fear, exhaustion and attempts to protect your child can be turned against you.
From the outside, my life once looked stable. I had built a career, become a mother, and created what seemed like a secure future.
But behind the scenes, I was living through coercive control, post separation abuse and years of family court involvement - experiences that slowly erode your confidence, your safety and your sense of reality.
I know what it feels like when fear is misread as instability.
When attempts to protect your child are reframed as conflict.
When systems meant to safeguard you end up questioning YOU instead.
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And I know the isolation that follows - when you stop speaking because you’re afraid your truth will be used against you.
At the exact time my daughter and I needed support the most, I carried everything alone.
It took years to understand there was nothing wrong with me. I was responding to sustained pressure, fear and uncertainty.
My turning point My turning point didn’t come from being told to think differently. It came from finally understanding what had happened to me.
Through therapy, self development and professional training, I began to understand trauma responses, boundaries and the patterns shaping my relationships.
I learned how to stop abandoning myself to keep the peace.
How to recognise manipulation and control.
How to trust my own judgement again.
But here’s the part that people don’t talk about.
Those tools did not magically fix everything.
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Because when you’re still navigating coercive control and court involvement, you don’t always get to act in ways that feel healthy or empowered.
Sometimes speaking up makes things worse. Sometimes setting boundaries risks retaliation. Sometimes you stay quiet, tolerate behaviour or make decisions you would never normally make, simply to protect your child or maintain contact.
And the guilt of that can be ENOURMOUS.​
"I still feel heavy - but I don't feel small. I feel bigger."
It took time for me to understand that surviving those situations sometimes means choosing the least harmful option available
- not the ideal one.
And that does not make you weak.
It makes you a parent trying to protect your child in an IMPOSSIBLE situation.
Why I do this work now.
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Over time, women began coming to me who were living through what I had lived through.
Women exhausted from trying to explain themselves.
Women whose fears had been minimised or misunderstood.
Women trying to protect their children while their own confidence collapsed.
I recognised something so important: Traditional therapy often asks, “What’s happening inside you?” But many women are still living under active external pressure. And when your reality is still unsafe or unstable, being asked to look only at your internal world can sometimes deepen self doubt rather than relieve it. Because the problem isn’t always inside you. Sometimes the pressure is real, ongoing, and outside your control.
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Women in these situations don’t need fixing.
They need support to stay steady while everything around them still feels so uncertain.
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How I work
My work centres on containment and integration support.
Containment supports women still navigating court proceedings, professional involvement or ongoing coercive control and post separation abuse. Because when pressure is ongoing, daily life often looks like this:
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• panic after emails from solicitors or social workers
• fear after contact or court hearings
• self-doubt after professional meetings
• exhaustion from constant pressure
• confusion about what’s real anymore after being questioned so often
• feeling like you’re about to collapse, but still needing to show up for your children.
Containment isn’t about analysing or fixing you. It’s about helping you to stay steady enough to keep going while all of this is still happening - so you don’t have to carry it alone.
Integration work comes later, when immediate pressures ease. At that point, the work shifts to helping women make sense of what they’ve lived through and rebuild confidence, identity and safety for themselves and their children.
Alongside 1:1 work, I also run The Sanctuary, an online space offering daily grounding support for women navigating these realities - helping to counter isolation and self doubt between meetings, reports and court processes.
"The only thing that truly helped me was working with Lisa. I felt deeply supported & understood at a time when nothing else was helping me to make sense of what I was living through"
Why This Matters
Because women and children are still being harmed in systems that do not always understand coercive control or post separation abuse.
Because protective mothers are still being misread.
And because no one should have to survive that alone.
If you’ve found your way here while trying to hold everything together for your child, hear this: