Meet Laila
My approach is rooted in both clinical training and lived experience. I hold an M.Phil in Clinical Psychology and am currently completing my PhD, where my research focuses on trauma-informed, body-based interventions. Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients navigating complex trauma, dissociation, addiction, attachment wounds, and nervous system dysregulation.
But my work goes beyond professional qualifications. It’s deeply personal.
I created Attune Somatics because I know what it’s like to live with a nervous system that’s constantly bracing, collapsing, or trying to hold it all together. I know how hard it can be to feel safe in your own body, to set boundaries without guilt, or to regulate when your internal world feels chaotic. This space exists as a response to that lived truth. My work is guided by the belief that healing doesn’t happen by pushing through—it happens by learning to listen differently. To the body. To the story underneath the symptom. To the nervous system’s language of breath, movement, and sensation.
I don’t believe in performance-based healing. You don’t have to become someone else. You don’t need to earn your way into worthiness. You are not broken. Your system has been adapting. And that adaptation deserves compassion, not correction.
If you’re here, you’re probably seeking something deeper—something safer, slower, more honest. I’m glad you’ve found your way here. May this space offer you relief, language, and tools to gently return to yourself.
The Development of My Therapeutic Approach
My therapeutic approach has been shaped by over 15 years of clinical experience, hundreds of client stories, and my own journey of learning, unlearning, and deep listening. While my early training was rooted in traditional models of psychology and talk therapy, it became clear to me within a few years of practice that something was missing. Clients were intelligent, articulate, and self-aware, yet they remained stuck in patterns of suffering. Insight alone was not enough.
The turning point came when I began to study trauma—not just as an event in the past, but as a lived experience in the nervous system. I came across the work of pioneers like Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, Bessel van der Kolk, and Gabor Maté, and something clicked. Trauma wasn’t a cognitive problem; it was a physiological and relational one. That realization transformed not only how I worked with clients but how I understood the human experience.
This shift took me beyond talk therapy into the world of the body. I began to integrate somatic and nervous-system-informed modalities, recognizing that healing isn’t something we can think our way into. It’s something we have to feel our way into—through presence, attunement, and safety. The nervous system became a central lens in my work: understanding dysregulation, freeze states, shutdown, hyperarousal, and the ways in which early attachment wounds shape a client’s sense of self and capacity for connection.
My approach today is integrative, trauma-informed, and body-aware. I draw from polyvagal theory, somatic psychology, attachment theory, and parts work. At the core of everything I do is the understanding that healing happens in safety—and safety is not just a concept, but a felt sense in the body.
This approach is also shaped by my own experience as a human being. I know what it’s like to live with chronic dysregulation. I’ve had to do the work myself—learning to recognize the difference between anxiety and intuition, between collapse and rest, between silence and safety. I’ve had to navigate grief, loss, shame, and the deep desire to feel whole. These experiences have made me a more grounded, attuned, and honest therapist.
Today, my work is not about fixing people. It’s about helping them come home to themselves. It’s about offering a space where what’s unspoken can be felt, where the body’s story can be heard, and where the nervous system can begin to trust that healing is possible. I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all models or rigid frameworks. I believe in relationship, responsiveness, and the intelligence of the body.
This philosophy doesn’t just live in the therapy room—it shapes how I teach, supervise, and train others. Whether I’m working with a client, a student, or a group of therapists, I bring the same values: humility, presence, and a deep respect for the human spirit.
My therapeutic approach is still evolving, and I hope it always will be. But if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s this: healing is possible—not because we push harder, but because we learn how to soften, how to listen, and how to stay.
Qualifications:
PhD (Scholar), Psychology (NUST, Islamabad)
M.Phil, Clinical Psychology (ICP, UoK, Karachi)
Certified Clinical Trauma Specialist (Arizona Trauma Institute, USA)
Clinical Supervisor