For me, therapy is about relationship, about human connection. It is two people coming together to try and make a change for one of them without necessarily knowing at the start what that change might look like. 

Maybe you feel anxious, depressed or that something is somehow just not right in your life. Maybe you are in such emotional pain that just getting through every day is a struggle and tomorrow feels unthinkable. That is our starting point. There is no formula for therapy, only an uncharted landscape that becomes clearer as we walk through it together.

This is, in essence, what I offer as a therapist. Not the ability to fix or diagnose, but a willingness to sit with someone in their pain and to hold on to the hope and faith that together we can find a way through. Even if it seems hope has fled, I believe we will find it again. And when I can hand that hope and that faith back, then I know that our work together is nearing completion.

Therapy is a tender art. I think at heart we all want to be understood and accepted, and all too often what we find in this world is uncertainty and rejection, and sometimes a cruelty that can tear at the very core of our being. This can stay with us long after the experience itself is over, twining itself around our present and dragging us back into a past that feels unsafe. 

Sometimes we can end up feeling that we are defined by pain or failure or grief. We can feel stuck. We wonder how we will ever find our way out of the dark hole we are in. We lose hope. 

Coming to therapy is a courageous step, and one we sometimes need to take at the very time it seems most impossible to take it. At first we will be strangers, and it may take a little time for us to feel comfortable and safe in each other’s company. That’s okay. Let’s talk about that, let’s step gently into this relationship. Gradually things will unfold. 

When I sit opposite someone in a therapy room or online I want to understand them, I want to know what it’s like to be them. I stay alongside them, whatever feelings arise. Let them come. The things that we can’t say, often the things that we can’t even think, can lose so much of their power when they can finally be said, and heard, and held by another person. 

My own path through life has not been smooth. I am not sure that anyone’s really is. I parent a neurodivergent child with a learning disability, something that has changed me indelibly as a person and shaped me as a therapist. It has taught me that I am not an expert in other people’s lives, not even in the life of my own child. I have learned to be curious, to listen, and to value compassion where judgement might otherwise creep in unnoticed. 

Everyone has their own story, their own context, and I hope that when someone sits with me they will feel safe enough to tell me theirs. Some stories are too heavy to carry alone.

As humans we grow from deep roots that are often unseen, that sometimes we have forgotten about, or become so used to that we aren’t even consciously aware of them. We cannot erase the things that have happened to us, the hurt that has been done to us, and sometimes by us. But we can learn to grow around our wounds, and by doing so learn to flourish and find joy in life, and that is what I hope we can do together.