• Anxiety and panic attacks

• Burnout and depression

• Grief, bereavement and loss

• Childhood and attachment

• Culture, identity and belonging

• Relationships, love and sex

• Career transitions

• Interculturality and multi-linguality

• ADHD and neurodiversity

• Climate change, environmental and political challenges

You may have a recent diagnosis or navigate neurodiversity for longer. You may suspect that you are neurodivergent, or are self-identifying.

Even with the knowledge of a diagnosis, it can be challenging to navigate the many ways that neurodiversity may show up in your life. Neurodiversity is often referred to as ‘identity-first’, meaning it is inherent to our being.

I am neurodivergent myself, and I have a particular interest in ADHD and autism.

I cannot officially diagnose neurodiversity, but I adapt therapy to neurodivergent needs, and try to do this in collaboration with you.

I can also explore with you how it presents in your life, and support you in the changes you may seek. Often therapy is only part of a wider treatment plan that we may want to take into account.

I work with cultural sensitivity to account for differences and to address questions about identity and belonging, including multi-linguality, being mixed-race, multi-hyphenated identities, and the role of ancestral trauma.

I approach this work from a point of personal experience, being mixed-race myself, a ‘third-culture kid’, and having lived and worked across Europe, the UK, the US, the Middle East and Asia. I am not native to the UK, and navigate two languages, several cultures, faiths, and different class backgrounds.

When it comes to culture, identity and belonging, I find it particularly important to validate that much of the pain we seek therapy for, is ongoing and not only past childhood-stuff, as some psychotherapeutic approaches may focus on.

I account for how oppression and privilege may show up in your life, and in our practice.

Working integratively allows me to stay adaptable, which is particularly useful for multi-hypenated and intersectional identities.

I work with the body-mind connection, somatic tools and aim towards a nervous-system reset.

This is a trauma-aware approach that moves beyond talking therapy and intellect.

When we are overwhelmed, it can be useful to first work with the body to establish a sense of internal safety, balance and capacity. Somatic (body-based) practices help us to find that balance in our nervous-system and tap into healing forces that are not accessible through cognition.

Latest trauma research and neuroscientific findings support the integration of body and mind in therapy, particularly to work with trauma, panic attacks, burnout, and anything with physical manifestation.

This work can look like mindfulness practices, guided meditations, body-scans and breathing exercises.

I work in a psychodynamically and compassion-focused way to address relationship dynamics and attachment.

That means I aim for a collaborative and transparent style, and address what is going on between us in a compassionate way that centres your needs. I offer you the opportunity to use our relationship as a practice space for the changes you may want to make in your life.

Evidence suggests that successful psychotherapy is based on a positive relationship with your therapist. Psychotherapy offers the opportunity to forge a new way to experience relationship, and to regain trust in yourself, and in connection.

I also have specialised training working with relationships, love, sex and sexuality. I often share concepts to offer you an understanding of current psychological theory around relationships, such as about the nervous system, cultivating listening skills, attachment theory, Gottman’s four horseman, etc.

I work with grief, including for bereavement and a more general sense of loss.

Therapy often involves getting in touch with a sense of grief. Sometimes we can identify why and sometimes we just have a sense that something is at loss.

There are many different types of grief, losing a person through bereavement or the end of a relationship, displacement and moving home, miscarriages or abortion, grief caused by the social, political and environmental challenges of our times, or by our ancestral history. Sometimes our grief can be more elusive, about regrets, for things happening or not happening, our unmet expectations and unfulfilled hopes, and, quite common during longer term therapy, for the deficits, injustices and misses in our lives.

Grief tending can involve having a save space to open up to your grief, to talk about your loss, to learn somatic tools to regulate your nervous system, and to have professional support during this often frightening, overwhelming and unknown journey of adapting life to new circumstances.

I am working as honorary bereavement counsellor at the St. Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney/London, and can provide specialised service for when you are looking for bereavement counselling.

Burnout and work issues are often not far from each other.

It can seem as if emotional health comes at the cost of work, or that work doesn’t allow for the impact that our turbulent times inevitably have on our lives. Sometimes the two are connected when our work feels deeply meaningful and purposeful. You may also be looking for more of a coaching approach to issues that you face at work, or seek career counselling.

With my background leading international teams in tech, and stints at the UN and in public broadcasting, I bring personal experience of how to navigate the throes of work, and how to navigate purpose-driven work environments.

To address burnout, I apply a holistic approach that works with the body-mind connection and nervous-system reset, essentially aiming for rest. As well as looking at what may have led to burning out, and what changes may be needed.

I use creativity, Gestalt exercises, dreams, narrative and ‘parts’ of the self to access what is unconscious.

This allows you to find new ways of engaging with the meanings you make, and it can often lead to insights you wouldn’t get to otherwise. Working with ‘parts’ of the self is based on Transactional Analysis’ ‘ego states’, chair work and Internal Family Systems. It engages with what is unseen, the “oceanic feelings” that can often underpin memories that aren’t accessible through cognition, and their unconscious processes.

If you are more interested in neuroscience, with this approach you are essentially accessing new neural pathways and integrate the different brain hemisphere.

Therapy often involves questioning how habitual thoughts and behaviours may no longer serve their initial purpose. We can explore when and why you first developed those patterns, how they are showing up in your life and how you might want to change them.

I draw from CBT, Transactional Analysis and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to work with cultivating your own awareness and then exploring active measures towards specific change.

CBT is often the preferred approach in the NHS, for anxiety disorders, addiction and depression. In recent years, its practice has been expanded to include mindfulness, acceptance and commitment, and working with compassion. I generally use an integrative stance where a cognitive behavioural approach is embedded with others.

I apply systems-thinking and have deep regard for our interconnectedness. I consider our personal emotional health as not separate from our bodies, and as not separate from the health of our communities and planet.

Climate change, and the social and political challenges of our times can throw us into despair, or into a cycle of hope and disappointments. I validate and work with this, and aim to restore a sense of trust and possibility, despite what is happening.

I share context as to how therapy works and educate about therapeutic approaches as I apply them. This equips you with knowledge and agency over your own development.

I may also share resources with you, books to read, videos to watch, or use handouts to capture theory and to aid you in your process.

I work with compassion-based practices, such as self-parenting and self-compassion tools.

These practices help you develop new internal ‘resources’, despite a deficit we may have experienced in childhood, or a deficit we continuously experience because systems of care are failing us. They help you to cultivate a sense for what might be lacking, for how you can respond to your needs in a compassionate way, and possibly even provide for some of your needs from within yourself.

Transactional Analysis is one of the original integrative, humanistic approaches to psychotherapy. Integrative means that it blends and borrows from different styles of therapy, so to adapt to your process and individual needs. Humanistic means that its philosophical underpinnings believe in the inherent wholeness of every human, and our capacity for clarity, care and change. It was originally concerned with making therapy accessible and coined some popular phrases, such as ‘I’m OK, and you’re OK’.

Transactional Analysis introduced some influential key concepts to therapy, that seem to have impacted later therapy movements, such as Internal Family Systems and CBT. For example:

• the idea of internalised, different parts of our ‘self’, so called ego states,

• a more systematic approach to change thinking and behaviour through awareness and intentions,

• a collaborative therapeutic relationship based on your goals for therapy,

• the concept of a ‘script’ or unconscious rules for living to decipher self-reinforcing internalised messages,

• looking at relationship patterns through the lens of the roles that we play,

• introducing the idea of reparenting and self-parenting to make up for deficits from childhood,

• assessing communication styles (which is where the term ‘transaction’ comes from),

• it also borrows a lot from Gestalt therapy, for example, chair work, a creative way to dialogue through unresolved conflict and grief.