About Me

I am a qualified psychotherapist (PG Dip. Integrative Counselling & Psychotherapy, MSc. Psychology, MNCPS Accredited) with 9 years experience working in mental health support. I believe that people have an innate capacity for self-fulfilment, but I also understand the self-doubt that can build up when we feel chronically unseen by the world around us. In these contexts, where certain needs may have gone unmet, I believe therapy can provide the validation needed to help us become grounded again in our inner wisdom and self-knowledge.

My aim as a therapist is to empower you to reconnect to your intuition and ultimately provide a space where you can come home to yourself.

I believe patience and understanding are key with this work so I will take all the time needed to help you unpack and make sense of your situation with compassion for all its nuances and complexities. You may find that this deeper clarity is all that you require from therapy. Or you may want to build on this newfound understanding by working together to identify any power you have within your circumstances to make new choices.

Either way I will be there alongside you, figuring it out together as we go and empowering you for as long as it feels needed.

My lived experience & approach to differences

My personal lived experience as a queer, AuDHD therapist and my professional background in supporting those with hidden disabilities means I am drawn to difference and truly view our differences as something to be explored and celebrated. I try to maintain awareness of my own privileges and an appreciation for identities and beliefs outside of my own including all sexualities and gender identities. I welcome discussion of differences in therapy sessions. Some of my fondest moments in this work have been with clients who had vastly different lived experience to me and I work with clients from a hugely diverse range of backgrounds. Although it may feel slightly uncomfortable to raise, some clients find that initiating discussions about our differences early on, or even during our initial consultation, can help to alleviate their concerns about being misunderstood and can even deepen the mutual trust of the therapy relationship.

Specialisms

As well as private therapy I have also provided therapy through several organisations including short-term and long-term client work. I have supported clients in services that support specific needs such as bereavement and also in services that offer support with a broader range of issues. In addition to my therapy practice I have worked as a Specialist Mentor for disabled university students for over 5 years. This means I carry an in-depth knowledge of the impact of a range of disabilities and mental health conditions, particularly some of the more complex and lesser-understood aspects of hidden disabilities.

My specialisms include:

Bereavement, loss and grief
Burnout, perfectionism and over-achieving
Disability (including hidden disabilities e.g. ADHD, Autism, Chronic Fatigue, Long COVID)
Gender, sexuality and relationship diversity (including kinks)
Historical abuse & traumatic experiences (including bullying)
Loneliness & loss of community (including male loneliness)
Low self-esteem & lack of confidence
Mental health conditions (e.g. depression, anxiety, OCD)
Procrastination, concentration, motivation and technology/screen addiction
Relationship issues (including break-ups, dating and unconventional relationship practices)
Work (e.g. stress & dissatisfaction)

Approaches and Techniques offered

As an Integrative Psychotherapist, I tend to draw on a range of different strategies, approaches and techniques and this will depend entirely on the needs of each individual client on any given day.

This can all feel very vague and hard to understand without specifics so below are two fictional examples of what my adaptable and client-centred approach can look like in practice:

Example One - Sometimes clients have been to see many therapists and have become very skilled at reflecting verbally on their experiences although they may be struggling to connect to anything beyond their intellectual understanding. For a client in this position they may want to move quite quickly into trying some creative or somatic techniques (a focus on reconnecting the body and mind) together as they have already spent a lot of time and money talking about their life story in therapy. It may feel more helpful for them to try something new and less verbal that might help them really access their emotions instead of just their thoughts.
Example Two - By contrast, for a client who is particularly anxious about coming to therapy for the first time, we might slow the pace right down and use the first few sessions to gently start building trust. The client might find it helpful to do some doodling or to play with a fidget or sensory tool while we speak. We might discuss the option of keeping the conversation fairly surface-level for a while until the client decides they know me well enough and feels safe enough to begin dipping their toe into deeper topics.

The above examples are simply an illustration of just a couple of approaches and tools that I may adopt or suggest in sessions.

Below is a list of the approaches I tend to borrow from most often:

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Compassion Focused Therapy
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy
Existential Therapy
Internal Family Systems
Narrative
Relational approaches (e.g. Person-Centred therapy)
Solution-Focused Therapy
Somatic approaches
Transactional Analysis
Trauma-informed approaches

If you're interested in booking a free initial consultation or if you just want to find out a bit more, please feel free to complete my 'Contact Request Form' and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

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