How I work
My Approach
I am a Relational Integrative Practitioner
Relational means...
that I provide a therapeutic relationship that supports and fosters your healing and growth. I offer you both the opportunity to risk being yourself with me and to discover who you can be when you feel truly accepted for who you are.
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Integrative means...
that I bring together different therapeutic approaches, psychological theories and research to respond flexibly to your unique needs. This allows us to focus on what really matters to you, helping you to achieve the best possible outcomes in your therapy.
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Approaches I use
I am an integrative psychotherapist, meaning I draw from a variety of models, theories and practices to match the uniqueness of your situation. I work primarily from a foundation of Humanistic principles, guided by Rogerian person-centred theory, and incorporate into this psychoanalytic thinking, attachment theory, existential philosophy, phenomenology and transactional analysis.
I have a particular interest in early life experience and the unconscious forces influencing our lives, as I believe that bringing these into awareness can lead to profound and lasting change. In addition, I draw on a wide body of knowledge from psychology, philosophy, feminism, spirituality, sociology, neuroscience and trauma and health research. You don’t need to be familiar with any of these terms to benefit from therapy, however, if you are interested, there’s further information here. Theories aside, ultimately what is important is you and your experience.
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My approach recognises the lasting impact of trauma, stressful events, or challenging relationships, you may have experienced or witnessed. As such, my focus is on empathic listening, a deep curiosity about you and your life, and understanding and helping you work through your experiences, rather than diagnosing what is ‘wrong’ with you.​
I also recognise the value of creative approaches in therapy. Exploring dreams, metaphor, imagery, stories, myth and symbolism can offer a meaningful way to express feelings, often leading to deep insights that might not be reached through words alone.
For those who find it challenging to express their feelings or feel that traditional 'talking therapies' are sometimes too limiting, incorporating imagination, objects, or art can provide an effective way of communicating, often resulting in 'light bulb' moments of understanding.
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​​​Fundamentally, I believe in the primacy of the here and now relationship between you and me, client and therapist. There is ample research showing that what ultimately heals and brings about change are alive, exciting and meaningful relationships, and this is what we would seek to find and build together in the therapy space. This is because our deepest emotional and psychological wounds often occur in relationships, so it follows that healing also takes place within relationships. A strong, trusting bond between therapist and client creates the safety needed for genuine exploration and growth. In this safe, non-judgemental space, we can uncover important insights that foster personal development, particularly in areas such as self-esteem, confidence, and how you relate to others.
The therapy room is a space where you can fully be yourself, perhaps for the first time—and see what unfolds when you do. It’s also a place to explore and experiment with new ways of communicating and presenting yourself to the world. The therapeutic relationship is also a key factor in helping us to understand patterns in our lives that may be unhelpful or destructive and for working through these. This will lead to improvements both in your day to day life and relationships (with yourself and others) outside of the therapy room.
My views on mental health
I do not assume that mental health issues are solely biological or the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. Social, cultural, political, economic, and relational environments also play a significant role in shaping how we think, feel, and act.
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Intrinsic to providing mental health diagnoses is the belief, or worldview, that our behaviours and difficulties can be pathologised. However, I take an approach to mental health that recognises life’s various experiences can be challenging, and the emotional difficulties we encounter are often normal responses to these challenges.
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I also believe that the symptoms we experience often carry deeper meanings. By deciphering these and understanding their underlying messages, we can begin to ease symptoms and relieve distress, which facilitates deep healing rather than applying a temporary fix.
What is the difference between psychotherapy & counselling?
There is no one definitive definition of psychotherapy or counselling and the way psychotherapists and counsellors work can often overlap. Both use talking therapy to help individuals with emotional difficulties, but the training for each is different, with psychotherapy training, like my own, often being longer and more in-depth in order to rigorously prepare therapists to be equipped for clinical practice.
Although the terms are often used interchangeably, there is usually a sense that psychotherapy is longer term and more appropriate for issues that are deep seated and rooted in someone’s past, whereas counselling may be shorter term and appropriate for a single issue of a more recent onset. In this sense psychotherapy and counselling can be regarded as opposite ends of a continuum, with some overlap and natural progression between them.
Both psychotherapy and counselling involve establishing a highly confidential relationship between therapist and client, where the client feels able to talk freely about whatever is troubling them. The idea is that by listening carefully and attentively the therapist can start to gain an understanding of their client’s experiences, help them to understand how they’ve arrived at this point in their life, and how they can move forwards if that is important to them. Through this process, people often find that something shifts or opens up—whether it’s a new way of looking at things or simply a different way of being.
Given this (and the research supports this claim) the personal and relational qualities of psychotherapists and counsellors are often more significant to therapeutic outcomes than their academic qualifications or professional education. The amount of personal therapy in which an individual practitioner has engaged will play a crucial role in this. All UKCP-registered psychotherapists, myself included, will have had far in excess of four years of their own weekly psychotherapy with an experienced psychotherapist, ensuring a deep and nuanced personal understanding of the therapeutic process.
As such, I would suggest the most important this to think about when choosing a therapist, or between psychotherapy and counselling, is whether you feel the therapist is the right fit for you, whether you feel you can work with them and whether they have engaged in their own extensive personal therapy. For your safety, ensuring the psychotherapist or counsellor is qualified and a member of a professional body is also important.
Most therapists expect a first session to be about establishing whether you feel you can work together. It's ok to see more than one therapist for a first session in order to make the right choice. This might take more effort initially however will pay off in the long-term if it means you find the right professional to work with.