Let's find the right way to work together.
By training, all therapists work to a non-judgemental stance. What's harder to train into someone, and comes with experience, is the ability to begin to feel and understand what it's like to be you today — and to be looking for help.
You probably feel that your answer is frustratingly out of reach, and that even those who normally help you get there can't seem to this time.
There's a strong chance that your social and work life is starting to be dominated by your search, that behaviours are appearing that seem alien to you, that emotions are harder to control, and that a good night's sleep feels like a distant memory.
Reaching out for help marks the beginning of a therapeutic journey that means you can start to reconnect with your sense of control and agency over your life — something that right now might just seem impossible.
I'm here to work with you to clarify your perspective on your life — to choose what feels like the right course of action in a way that is inclusive, compassionate and considered. If you'd like to know more about who I am and how I work, you'll find that on the About page.
Most people who find their way here aren't sure exactly what's wrong. They know something is. The morning feels heavier than it should. Getting up to shower or make a cup of tea now takes a degree of effort that is exhausting — it probably feels easier to stay in bed. Conversations that used to come easily now take effort. There's a feeling like a weight pressing on your chest, and when you try to talk about it, it starts to feel like it's rising to your throat. You're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix — if you're sleeping at all. And somewhere underneath all of it is a question you can't quite form — is this just my life?
By the time most people get here, someone has already given what they're feeling a name. A GP has said anxiety, offered a referral and a prescription. A family member thinks they can see you're depressed. Your boss spoke to you about managing your stress, with a furrowed brow. Sometimes the label is a relief — it means something real is happening and there's a word for it. Sometimes it lands wrong, or adds a new layer of confusion on top of everything. Sometimes it becomes something to live up to, or live down. Whether you arrive with or without a label — it isn't where we start.
We begin with where you actually are — two people sitting in a room, or on screen, meeting for the first time and talking. Not the label, not the referral, not what anyone else has observed. We begin with what it's like to be you today, with everything you're holding. From there we work out what's happening, what matters most, and what might help. That's probably enough for one week.
Life is complicated enough without a diagnosis, let alone with one.
Relationships that have stopped rewarding your emotional time and effort like they used to. A loss that people tell you should have moved to a different stage by now, but hasn't. A life transition that looked straightforward from the outside but has left you feeling unexpectedly weighed down. A growing sense that you're not quite living the life you expected to by now. None of these come with a referral letter or a diagnosis. They don't always have a name. But they're real, and they matter, and they're exactly the kind of thing that therapy is for.
Most people who struggle with sleep aren't struggling because they've forgotten how. The body knows. What gets in the way is everything else — the thoughts that arrive the moment your head hits the pillow, the 3am waking with no obvious cause, the dread that builds through the evening because you already know tonight is going to be difficult. The more you try to force it, the further away it gets. And the tiredness that accumulates isn't just physical — it starts to affect everything. Your mood, your patience, your ability to think clearly, your sense of who you are when you're functioning well.
Along the way most people find something that takes the edge off. An extra glass or two with dinner, or when you're out with friends. An over the counter sleep aid you're taking a little more of than the label suggests. A feeling that the people around you have learned to leave you alone until you've had your third cup of coffee sometime around mid-morning. They're your creative solution to a problem. But they're also signals worth paying attention to.
Sleep wasn't something I went looking for as a specialism — there's plenty of advice out there, from sleep hygiene routines to excellent books like Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep. I was asked to put together four top tips for maintaining good mental health and sat down to review my client notes. What I found stopped me — every client I had worked with over three years had raised losing, missing or struggling with sleep at some point during our sessions. Not always as the main reason they came. But it was always there. That discovery sent me to the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences to find out more. The training I did there was a masterclass attended by GPs, psychologists and psychiatrists. And me. CBT-I — a structured approach to persistent sleep difficulty, approved by NICE and delivered by the NHS — is the intervention the evidence points to most consistently, and the one that made the most sense of what I'd been hearing in the room for years.
If the thought of another weekend spent catching up on sleep you lost in the week — newsflash, you can't — a Sunday night spent spinning around staring at a clock that must be broken because it's only ten minutes later than the last time you checked, or the realisation that sleeping like a baby isn't actually a good thing for a grown woman, is too much to bear — let's find a way to remind you that you know how to sleep.
Your sport gives you a relationship with yourself that most other things don't. The discipline, the setbacks, the moments when everything clicks and the longer periods when nothing does. The teammates who become something closer than colleagues and the opponents who show everyone something you might have noticed but didn't want to reveal. If you've played at any level — and seriousness has nothing to do with level — you'll know that what happens on the pitch, the field or the track is rarely just about the game.
But at some point that relationship changes. Sometimes it's gradual — a shift in what the game gives back, a growing sense that something that was never quite effortless definitely needs more now than you ever experienced. Sometimes it's a specific moment — a decision made for you, a level you moved to or away from, a day you walked off and didn't go back. Whatever shape it takes, what sits underneath is usually the same — who am I in relation to this thing that has defined so much of how I see myself?
The question underneath is worth asking. I'm here if you want to ask it of someone who doesn't know either.
The majority of people arrive at therapy because something has become too difficult to manage alone. After all, that's what society thinks therapists do. Whatever it is that drives you to therapy, it's the right reason. Once you've worked out that life is lighter than it was, you are grounded and know who's in charge, something else might be possible — a new conversation about how to thrive, how to explore without dreading a wrong turn, about realising the next right place for you starts with deciding that it's ok to set off.
Here's where it might feel different from when you first arrived. You may have the energy to carry on, or want to take a break and return in six months. You're not being driven to come by anything other than curiosity and purpose. Some of the limiting beliefs from earlier sessions are weaker than they've ever been, making it easier and quicker to talk about choices and decisions. You might even realise that the energy you used to keep something bottled up can now be used to find a bottle opener — and how much easier is that!