My Approach
We are often sold the idea that everything has a quick fix: a technique, a hack, a programme that gets you back to normal in six weeks.
This work doesn’t operate at that level. Some of what brings you here can’t be fixed, not in the sense of returning your life to how it was before: a loss, a diagnosis, a childhood, a life that turned out differently to the one you expected.
That’s not a failure on your part, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Some things are simply hard because they are hard. Often what makes it heavier is what we pile on top of the original pain: the judgement that we shouldn’t still be struggling, the fear that struggling means we have failed.
Here, you get somewhere to put all of it down, honestly, with someone who won’t flinch or rush you toward a quick fix.
And there’s a strange truth in this work: change tends to come not from forcing yourself back to how you were, but from finally being able to accept, fully, that you are exactly where you are.
Grieve, TEND, CREATE
I work in three ways. You won’t move through them in order, and you don’t need to name which one you’re in. Most weeks the work will hold a bit of all three.
Grieve
Some of what brings you here may not have been said out loud before, not properly, not to someone who understood its weight. This is where we name what’s been lost: the child who didn’t arrive, the health you used to have, the childhood you should have had, the parent who wasn’t able to show up, the midlife that has crept up on you unannounced, the relationship that hasn’t gone to plan. Grief that perhaps never got a funeral or formal acknowledgement, and still needs to be met and have somewhere to go. We can give it that room, without a deadline on how long it should take.
TEND
This is the working end of therapy. The part that helps you live inside the life you actually have, not the one you planned. We build capacity: for the illness that isn’t going away, for the caring role that’s taken over your week, for the body and mind finding their feet again in midlife, for the relationship that feels stuck. This might mean nervous-system work, learning to notice and interrupt old patterns, or simply practising staying present with something difficult instead of managing it from a distance.
Create
Alongside the talking and the listening therapy, I bring in creative and more right-brain practice. This might include letter writing, drawing, working with objects and images, morning pages, time outdoors. Not as a diversion from the real work, but because some things can only be reached side-on, not head-on. This is also where we start turning attention toward what’s still possible: not a replacement life, but a Plan B built with the same care you’d have given the one you lost.
Therapy helps you grieve the life you planned. Creative practice helps you make the life that’s here.
How I work
I trained as a UKCP-registered integrative psychotherapeutic counsellor and therapist, which means I draw on several traditions rather than one fixed method.
This includes psychodynamic work to understand where a pattern began, present-moment and body-based work to help you meet what’s here now, and existential and narrative work for the bigger questions about meaning and what comes next.
I also work outdoors where it serves the work. Walking sessions are available in Brighton & Hove, because being in the wider, more-than-human world often loosens something that stays stuck indoors.
I see individuals and couples, in person in Brighton & Hove and online worldwide.
Who this tends to suit
Most of the people I work with are adults with established lives, often outwardly successful (although not always), who are carrying something that no longer fits. You are likely used to managing things yourself, and ready to look honestly at what’s underneath that.
This is reflective, sometimes demanding work. It asks for weekly commitment and a willingness to sit with what’s uncomfortable rather than resolve it quickly.
I don’t offer crisis support or emergency availability.
Getting started
We begin with a free 20-minute introductory call. This is a chance for us both to sense whether this is the right work at the right time.
