As a psychodynamic therapist, I aim to create a safe space where we can explore your life together. This includes your thoughts and feelings connected to aspects of your identity, issues that might be troubling you, your behavioural patterns and your relationships with others. My approach is rooted in curiosity, working with you collaboratively to explore these themes and how they might evolve over time at a pace that is right for you.

The psychodynamic approach emphasises the importance of early life experiences and how these shape us as individuals. As well as exploring material from your every day life, we might work with memories or dreams and unconscious beliefs and motivations. The  therapeutic relationship that exists between us as therapist and client is also important, offering a framework for considering how you might relate to others in your life.

Our work will seek to understand the cause of any issues you face, and what alternative ways of being might exist. Though we’ll focus on you as an individual, my practice also accounts for the wider environmental, social, cultural and political context in which we live, and how these things shape our experiences of the world. I have an actively anti-racist practice and an affirmative approach to experiences of gender diversity and sexual orientation. I am inclusive of neurodivergent clients and those experiencing all forms of visible and invisible disability. 

Image credit: Ben Topliss

In particular, I specialise in working psychologically with the environment. This means something unique to each person. For some, it might include emotions connected to the climate crisis and the natural world, such as anxiety, grief, rage, shame and guilt. To others, it might include feelings about the ‘environment’ that shaped them growing up, thinking about ideas of home connected to  inter-cultural and national identities.

I integrate this with a trauma- informed somatic approach, seeking to understand the main environment in which the mind exists: the body. In particular, I’m interested in the psychological aspects of pain and illness, and the mind-body connection. 

Most importantly, I believe there isn’t a right or wrong answer in this work. Instead, we have the opportunity to think creatively about how you might overcome challenges and difficult patterns of behaviour, so that you can feel more empowered in your life.