DR COMFORT SHIELDS
CPsychol, AFBPsS, MBACP (Accred), PhD, MPhil & MSt (Oxon), FRAI
Private Psychotherapist, Chartered Psychologist, Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Welcome, my name is Comfort. I am a chartered psychologist, accredited member of the BACP and the co-founder of the former Box Tree Clinic in the Harley Street District of Marylebone, Central London where I served as the Clinical Director for several years. I see adults for individual or couples therapy from any culture, sexuality, gender, and religion. I am also a clinical supervisor for psychotherapists.
I see patients with many issues ranging from anxiety, adjustment issues, depression, grief, relationship issues, and trauma. I specialise in grief, complex and traumatic bereavement, abuse, other types of trauma, and PTSD.
BACKGROUND AND QUALIFICATIONS
I am a graduate of Oxford University, Fielding Graduate University (APA Accredited, California) where I had over 5 years of full-time post-graduate psychology PhD training, and trained at Yale University Medical Centre, where I did my clinical externship. My PhD is based on my doctoral dissertation in the area of trauma and attachment. Clinical psychology training in the United States is comprehensive and prepares psychologists to be psychotherapists, diagnosticians, as well as researchers and academics. While I practice as a psychodynamic and humanistic psychotherapist, I am certified in EMDR and also have extensive training in many other modalities. Educated in both the USA and UK and born in America, I have lived in the UK for 15 years.
I have published peer reviewed articles in leading psychology journals, and presented research at the American Psychological Association’s national convention. I have completed extensive original research on complex bereavement, attachment, and temporality and was awarded the Creative Longevity and Wisdom Fellowship from the Institute for Social Innovation. Psychoanalyst, philosopher, and author of Trauma and Human Existence, Robert Stolorow described reading my research as “an exhilarating experience”. I have spoken on dozens of radio programmes about suicide loss survival.
"READING THIS WAS TRULY EXHILARATING FOR ME."
Feedback on Comfort's existential-psychodynamic study of complex bereavement, temporality, and attachment
[ROBERT STOLOROW, PHD, AUTHOR OF TRAUMA AND HUMAN EXISTENCE]
MY PHILOSOPHY
My philosophy is that although most human beings experience difficult periods in their lives, it is not the difficult periods themselves that make people who they are; but rather it is what people make of the difficult periods that defines individuals. Clients are best able to work through painful experiences when they receive emotional validation and empathy from their therapists through the process of therapeutic alliance.
THERAPY INFORMED BY ANTHROPOLOGY
I am also an anthropologist, and completed an advanced postgraduate research degree at Oxford University in social and cultural anthropology with a specialisation in sociolinguistics. I am a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. My prior training in anthropology carries through to my psychotherapy work today, not only in working with multi-cultural issues but also in the way that I approach each client as a unique individual with his or her own set of values and ways of perceiving the world.
I feel strongly that there is not one objective universal “truth” that a therapist needs to convey to each client, and that rather each human being experiences the world differently and needs to develop or find his or her own meaning.
I have a special interest in helping clients to identify both verbal and non-verbal–and particularly symbolic–patterns of communication and power dynamics in their relationships and in forming their sense of self both in the past and the present. This fascination with language and power began while I was a creative writing student and four-year-advisee of the novelist, William Melvin Kelley’s, at Sarah Lawrence College. The Oxford English Dictionary credits William Melvin Kelley with coining the word “woke“.
AREAS OF TREATMENT
Among the other issues that I regularly treat such as anxiety, bereavement and grief, depression, and relationship issues, I also specialise in treating trauma and PTSD with Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) including such areas as:
- EMDR for trans-generational trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD
- EMDR for human trafficking victims' trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD
- EMDR for refugees' trauma and PTSD
- EMDR for survivors' of domestic abuse trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD
- EMDR for survivors' of physical abuse trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD
- EMDR for survivors' of sexual abuse trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD
- EMDR for suicide loss survivors' trauma and PTSD,
- EMDR for complex bereavement trauma and PTSD
- And more...
Additionally, I have a special interest and devote a significant part of my practice to working with high functioning adults on the Autism Spectrum.
