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Offers

• Face-to-face consultations
• Video and telephone consultations

About me

I am a registered Health Care Professions Council (HCPC) and British Psychological Society (BPS) Practitioner Psychologist. I typically work with people who feel they have lost or are losing their way; who struggle with anxiety, depression, anger, and shame; who wrestle with guilt, mistrust, addiction, and dissociation; who are self-critical, self-destructive, and who feel trapped in repeated patterns of hurting self and others.

Such feelings, behaviours, and patterns of relating typically stem from myriad life events and circumstances, including, for example: past and present abusive, neglectful, and controlling relationships; bereavement and loss; repressed and unprocessed grief, fear, rage, and joy (yes, joy); racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia; gender expectations; parenthood; political and economic pressures; and from isolation from community, and loneliness. On an existential level, such challenges also emerge from relationships we have to meaning, responsibility, authenticity, sexuality, and identity; and from the fear of failure, death, illness, and rejection.

The way I see it, human beings are not self-contained individuals, but subjects of societies, and systems (including family systems, and healthcare systems), characterised by ignorance, intolerance, injustice, and cruelty; factors commonly hidden when their effects are framed as, at root, a case of dysfunction within individuals. Unfortunately, such framing also lies at the heart of the dominant Western approach to 'mental health', an approach that is medicalising, decontextualising, and which functions, often, to bolster the power not of patients, or clients, but clinicians. The experience of speaking and not feeling truly heard in these kinds of contexts can leave us feeling worse than before. More isolated. More alone.

I have written about this here:

https://www.madintheuk.com/2022/11/young-people-bipolar-disorder-diagnosis/

And here:

https://www.madintheuk.com/2023/05/austerity-class-war-mental-health/

I offer a warm, nurturing space in which, collaboratively, we can explore and make sense of difficulties you face. In essence, as a practitioner psychologist, I recognise that emotional, psychological, behavioural, and relational difficulties usually have multiple causes, and therefore different therapeutic methods will be helpful for different people at different times.

I am presently involved with The Philadelphia Association (https://www.philadelphia-association.org.uk), founded in the UK in order to challenge established (and outdated) ways of thinking about and responding to human suffering. I also trained with the Institute of Psychedelic Therapy (https://instituteofpsychedelictherapy.org), and offer one to one and group therapy and circles focused on psychedelic experiences, aimed at the safe and skilful integration of such states, and harm minimisation. I do not offer any illegal psychedelic therapies, so please do not contact me about this. Additionally, because we recognise that the single most powerful healing resource we have is community, I am part of a team of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, focused on wellbeing-enhancing community building projects in the UK and Netherlands, and ensuring that people are held safely, and ethically, in psychedelic spaces.

I offer free initial (scheduled) phone consultations of up to 20 minutes.

I look forward to hearing from you.