About

Eleonora Bolla

In 2012, I received a five-year degree in clinical psychology from the University of Milan-Bicocca.

From 2012 to 2019, I collaborated with the mental health department of Niguarda Hospital in Milan and continued my specialisation studies in psychotherapy. During those years, within the national health system, I participated in several experimental psychological support projects aimed at political refugees, women victims of sex crimes, behavioural disorders and severely marginalised patients. I conducted therapeutic interviews with patients hospitalized in the wards and in the acute decompensation phase; I continued to follow the same patients after their discharge from the wards and in the later stages of stabilization, through individual paths of psychotherapy and psychological support.

Always convinced that teamwork works better than individual work only, I interfaced over the years with territorial services as an attempt to implement a system of network collaborations and offer the best care.

I was supervised by psychologists and psychiatrists who were trained under the influence of Basaglia's thought. During my years in post graduate school, I was fortunate to learn approaches and techniques from great teachers, who taught me a huge number of skills.

I specialize in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and am qualified to use both Level I and Level II EMDR methods. Over the years, I have followed several patients on EMDR pathways and participated in supervision, seminars and training workshops for the use of the method in different settings and for different disorders.

I have developed expertise on multiple clinical disorders and personality disorders. I have been involved in both training and clinical interventions on patients with dissociative, Adaptation, Post Traumatic Stress Disorders.

I have held the position of residential community manager. I have conducted group therapies with patients and/or family members. I have supervised several work teams, consisting of psychologists, psychotherapists, educators and social workers, within ordinary and special shelters. I collaborated with the Beccaria and San Vittore prison institutes in Milan in the psychological intake of adolescents and young offenders.

In 2019 I moved to London, where I favoured private practice in my native language.

I decided to make my skills and knowledge in treating symptoms or psychological issues accessible to my compatriots, who emigrated like me to London and prefer to investigate the subconscious in Italian.

I believe that private practice allows for a more confidential environment and allows more focus to different personal needs. I currently practice both online and in-person, at my private practice in London's Liverpool Street and within a private medical clinic in London.

I collaborate with several highly qualified Italian doctors who can offer different specialized services within the multiple facilities in which they work. I have always placed great importance on teamwork as I believe that the most effective way to therapy is through a multifactorial point of view, to be able to treat a complex situation from different perspectives with other specialists.

I have worked for years with adults, young adults and couples, coping with life cycle issues and/or issues in the work environment. I am experienced in the treatment of anxiety disorders (phobias, panic attacks), sexual difficulties, mood disorders, insomnia, study/work difficulties (motivation, stress, self-esteem, bullying), adjustment difficulties (toward new work/housing/relational contexts), relationship and/or couple difficulties (conflict, sexuality, fertility and generativity), grieving or separation, dissociative disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.

My philosophy

Who am I and how do I work?

In my work I start from the assumption that the psyche functions as a system that tends toward equilibrium. To use a metaphor, it's like a hydraulic system, where desires and emotions are the liquid flowing inside pipes, which represent our structure, our defences. If there is an obstruction within a pipe or excess fluid builds up in the system, it creates an imbalance leading to the development of symptoms. In these cases, it becomes critical to understand where the obstruction is, take action to remove the obstacle and avoid spillage of fluid and thus unnecessary expenditure of energy.

People often structure their identity according to strict and repetitive behavioural and functional patterns to gain control, tame the flow and calm anxiety. In some cases, a blockage may occur that creates an imbalance. A possible dysfunctional reaction could be to activate rigid and repetitive moral, behavioural, or cognitive patterns, thus hardly adaptable to life's changes, in an attempt to resume control. This stands at the antipodes of the principle of freedom and hinders wise maturity of the ego, creating harmful consequences.

Not all people are the same and not all stories create the same scars.

The goal of my work is to help people improve the quality of their lives, by helping them restore a psychic balance that is optimal and functional for them. Psychotherapy is a time to analyse one's own and others' behaviours; it is a window from which to look at one's own emotions, an internal path of accepting or modifying parts of oneself, a time to stop and focus on oneself, one's context and the reality around us. Being able to restore temporal order to things, putting the pieces of one's life together in an integrative way.

Analysing the data that a person collects during psychotherapy can help unlock long-stalled situations and improve the level of awareness in moments of choice and decision-making.

Achieving the goal often requires investigating and working on multiple aspects, some affective, others more cognitive or behavioural.

In the psychotherapies I offer, I provide my training and skills, both clinical and psychoanalytically oriented, to help people see things from different points of view: to exercise critical thought, to reprocess trauma and to be more aware of one's defences and inner workings, with the goal of achieving balance and then being able to maintain it independently, experiencing maturity and freedom of the self.