Sabine Tendas

Sabine is a TA psychotherapist and helps clients understand how patterns from the past may be restricting how they live today, and how positive change can be created.

During my teens I struggled with my weight especially because, as a dancer, I felt the pressure to keep a good fit. The experience I had living in Brazil taught me that every body shape can dance, far from western stereotypes. Dancing definitely helped me getting in touch with my body needs and therefore with food management. I learnt to listen to my hunger stimulus and to distinguish whether it is real (physical) or emotional. Mindful eating helped me to approach the experience of eating rather than just do it. Eating is more than feeding a body, it is nurturing ourselves.

EATING IS MORE THAN FEEDING A BODY, IT IS A SENSORIAL EXPERIENCE AIMED AT SELF-NURTURING

My approach

My approach is based on Health Psychology, Mindfulness, Body Work and Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy. I am a fully qualified psychologist in Italy and I am a Psychotherapy student in advanced training.

Body, food, and care

As people we are a whole of body and mind and often the distress that cannot be conveyed with words, but it expresses itself through the body: our work together will comprise listening to its messages and make them available to the mind. I have been always interested in psychology of food, and I have been fascinated by the studies of mother-child relationship. When a mother feeds her baby, she is not only providing milk and nourishment, but love and safety as well. Every time we eat, we are not only introducing food, but we are also attending emotional needs. Food can be a mean to suffocate our fears, our anger, our sadness, our anxiety and so on. Sometimes we need to recreate a safe space; food most of time plays the role of a safety blanket. Together we will attend to the food-emotions dynamics that affects your daily life.

Working together

I will be paying attention to the thought processes and emotions, as well as the body language that may arise in the therapy room. I will be interested in hearing about your current difficulties as they happen in your life right now and how they are affecting your daily life. We will work alongside, and as a witness I will help you to discover and accept yourself.

I will support you to explore new behaviours that may decrease your distress, I will encourage your self-expression and kindly I will invite you to explore your past experiences as a way to help you to re-think your current difficulties. I truly believe that the capacity to experience deep feelings and sharing them in a safe space could increase awareness and lead to a therapeutic change, especially in relation to food and body weight.

My experiences

I have international experience in Italy, Spain and Brazil. I facilitated children, teenagers and adults to achieve autonomy and improve their emotional wellbeing. I worked with couples and family helping them to better communicate and manage their daily life. In Brazil, I facilitated groups of women in achieving a meaningful relationship with their body. We worked with the aim to improve their relationship with food and emotions using expressive movement, creative techniques and relational approach.

• 2022
• Certified Transactional Analyst-Psychotherapy
• 2021
• MA in Dance Movement Psychotherapy, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
• MSc Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy, Metanoia Institute London
• Foundation Course in Dance Movement Psychotherapy – University of Roehampton, London
• Working With Children And Adolescents Using Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy, ITAT Turin, Italy
• 2020
• First Level Of Gottman Method For Couples Therapy, ISC International
• Making Arts That Matter: A Multi-Modal Expressive Approach To Enhance For Eating Disorders, BPS London
• Working With Anxiety And Panic Attack Disorder Using CBT, Beck Institute, Rome, Italy
• 2019
• Mindful Eating, FCP Rome, Italy
• 2015
• MSc Psychology, University of Turin, Italy
• 2009
• BSc Health Psychology, University of Cagliari, Italy