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People come to therapy for many different reasons.

Sometimes something has happened and you know exactly why you need support. At other times, there is no single event to point towards. You may simply know that something does not feel right, that familiar patterns keep returning, or that you have become tired of carrying things alone.

I work with adults from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. You do not need a diagnosis or a perfectly formed explanation for why you are seeking therapy.

You can begin with what you know.

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Areas of Particular Interest

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Over the course of my clinical, academic and professional work, I have developed particular interests in trauma and complex life experiences, identity and belonging, shame and self worth, anxiety and depression, relationships and attachment, loss and significant life transitions.

I am particularly interested in working with people whose difficulties cannot easily be separated into one neat problem.

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Perhaps you function very well outwardly while something quite different is happening internally. You may be the person other people rely upon, yet find it difficult to ask for help yourself.

You may understand intellectually why you feel or behave in certain ways but discover that understanding it has not necessarily changed it.

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You may have survived difficult experiences and built a life beyond them, only to discover that the past continues to appear in relationships, your body, your emotions or the way you see yourself.

These are experiences I am interested in thinking about with you.

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Trauma and Difficult Beginnings

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Trauma is not always one identifiable event.

Sometimes it develops through what was repeatedly absent, unpredictable, frightening or unsafe. Experiences in childhood, disrupted relationships, care experience, neglect, abuse, domestic violence, abandonment or having to become independent too early can continue to shape adult relationships and our expectations of ourselves and others.

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Survival strategies that were once necessary can become exhausting when they are carried into a life where they are no longer needed in quite the same way.

Therapy can provide somewhere to become curious about those adaptations without treating them as defects.

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Shame, Self Worth and the Inner Critic

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Shame can be remarkably quiet.

It can appear as perfectionism, people pleasing, difficulty accepting kindness, fear of being exposed, feeling responsible for everybody else, struggling to say no, or believing that other people somehow possess something you do not.

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Sometimes the question beneath all of this is surprisingly simple:

What if there is something wrong with me?

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I have a particular clinical interest in shame and the ways early relationships and experiences can become internalised and later experienced as beliefs about who we are.

Therapy can begin to distinguish between what genuinely belongs to you and what you may have learned to carry.

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Relationships and Attachment

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You might notice yourself repeatedly drawn into similar relationships.

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Perhaps closeness feels both deeply wanted and strangely threatening. You might fear abandonment, find yourself caring for everyone except yourself, struggle with boundaries, withdraw when relationships become emotionally close, or remain in relationships long after you know something is not right.

Rather than asking only, “Why do I keep doing this?”, therapy allows us to become interested in another question:

What did this way of relating once protect me from?

Understanding the origins of a pattern can create the possibility of choosing something different.

 

Identity, Culture and Belonging

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There are times when the difficulty is not simply how we feel, but where we feel we belong.

I welcome conversations about race, mixed heritage, culture, class, gender, sexuality and identity.

I work with LGBTQ+ clients and with people who may be exploring, questioning or struggling to understand aspects of their sexuality or identity.

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I also have a particular interest in experiences of being between cultures or identities and in the psychological consequences of having parts of ourselves welcomed in some places and questioned in others.

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You do not need to arrive with a label.

Sometimes therapy is where the question can safely exist before an answer has been found.

 

Care Experience and Finding Your Own Way

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I have a particular interest in working therapeutically with adults who have experienced the care system, unstable childhoods, homelessness or significant disruption in their early lives.

Leaving a difficult environment does not necessarily mean leaving its psychological effects behind.

Adulthood can bring questions about family, belonging, trust, independence and identity that become especially complicated when the foundations other people take for granted were uncertain.

There can also be enormous resourcefulness in people who have learned to survive.

Therapy does not need to reduce you to what happened to you. It can also become interested in what you created in response.

 

Anxiety, Depression and Feeling Stuck

 

Anxiety and depression do not always look the way we expect them to.

You may still work, care for other people, maintain relationships and appear capable while privately feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, exhausted or frightened.

Rather than focusing only on reducing symptoms, I am interested in understanding what those feelings might be communicating and what is happening in the wider context of your life.

Sometimes symptoms are not meaningless interruptions.

Sometimes they are telling us that something needs our attention.

 

You Do Not Need to Fit a Category

 

The areas above describe some of my particular clinical interests. They are not a checklist for entering therapy.

Human lives rarely fit neatly into categories.

You may recognise yourself in several of these descriptions or none of them. What matters is whether there is something in your life that you would like the opportunity to understand differently.

If you are wondering whether I might be the right therapist for you, you are welcome to contact me for an initial conversation.

 

You do not need to know exactly where therapy will lead.

We only need somewhere honest enough to begin.