“When understanding the problem isn't enough to change it.”
Psychological Therapy for Professionals
I have over 25 years' experience delivering and researching psychological services and specialise in working with professionals in the City of London and other demanding environments.
Many of the people I work with are highly capable, psychologically minded and accustomed to solving difficult problems. They may understand exactly why they feel or behave as they do and yet find themselves unable to change the pattern.
This is where therapy can offer something different.
My approach goes beyond insight alone to understand what is maintaining the difficulty psychologically, emotionally and physiologically, and what is needed for meaningful change.
Psychological difficulty doesn't always look like difficulty.
Many professionals become extremely good at functioning through distress.
You may continue working, meeting deadlines, managing responsibility and appearing capable while internally experiencing anxiety, exhaustion, low mood, panic, irritability or a growing sense that something isn't right.
Sometimes the very qualities that have supported professional success can make psychological difficulties harder to recognise.
Self-reliance can make it difficult to ask for help. High standards can become relentless internal pressure. Responsibility can become over-responsibility. The ability to tolerate stress can mean continuing long after something needs attention.
Therapy provides a confidential space in which we can understand not simply how you are functioning, but what may be happening underneath it.
You may already understand the pattern.
People often come to therapy with considerable insight.
You may already know that you have perfectionist tendencies, are overly responsible, conflict avoidant or highly self-critical. You may understand where a pattern originated and recognise exactly when it is happening.
Knowing something and being able to respond differently are not always the same thing.
Some psychological responses become deeply learned and automatic. They may be connected to earlier experiences, emotional learning, relationships, beliefs about yourself or habitual threat responses.
This can explain the frustrating experience of knowing rationally that something is safe, manageable or no longer necessary, while another part of you continues to react as though it isn't.
My therapeutic approach therefore works with both conscious understanding and the deeper psychological processes that can keep old patterns operating in the present.
What brings people to therapy?
People come to therapy for many different reasons. Sometimes there is an identifiable difficulty such as anxiety, depression, panic or burnout. At other times, there is simply a recognition that the way you are feeling or responding is beginning to interfere with your life, relationships or work.
I commonly work with:
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Feeling persistently on edge, experiencing panic or finding that your mind and body continue to react even when you know rationally that you are safe.
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Still functioning, but increasingly depleted, irritable, detached or unable to recover properly between periods of pressure.
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Feeling driven by an internal pressure that makes it difficult to stop, make mistakes, disappoint others or feel that what you have done is enough.
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Bullying, difficult professional relationships, redundancy, career setbacks or other experiences that continue to affect confidence, authority or your response to particular situation
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Finding yourself repeatedly accommodating, over-functioning or taking responsibility for other people's needs despite understanding the cost to yourself.
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Low mood, disconnection, reduced motivation or questioning a life and career that may appear successful from the outside.
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Promotion, parenthood, relationship change, bereavement, menopause, retirement or other transitions that unsettle a previously established sense of self.
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Living with persistent worries about your health, digestive difficulties or physical symptoms that may be affected by stress and anxiety, including medically unexplained or persistent physical symptoms where investigations have not provided a clear explanation.
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Returning to a demanding role after a period of illness can bring unexpected challenges. Therapy can help with rebuilding confidence, managing anxiety about health or performance, adjusting expectations and finding a sustainable way to re-engage with work without feeling pressure to immediately return to how things were before.
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Understanding how ADHD and autism may be contributing to exhaustion, overwhelm or difficulties in relationships. Therapy can help with recognising patterns of masking and over-adaptation, understanding your needs more clearly and new ways of working, relating and recovering. This work is for individuals and couples.
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Recognising that earlier experiences or relationships continue to influence your emotional reactions, relationships, confidence or behaviour today.
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Different problems require different ways of working.
I don't assume that every difficulty is maintained in the same way or that one therapeutic model is appropriate for everyone.
My work draws on over 25 years of psychological practice and research and integrates evidence-based approaches including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), EMDR and evidence in interpersonal neurobiology.
Sometimes change requires examining thoughts, beliefs and behaviours. Sometimes it involves developing a different relationship with difficult thoughts and emotions. Sometimes experiences have become encoded in ways that require us to work more directly with memory, emotion and physiological responses.
The approach we take depends upon what appears to be maintaining the difficulty and what you need from therapy.
When the past continues to feel present.
Not everything that affects us psychologically is stored as a clear story that we can simply understand and move beyond.
Sometimes an experience has been intellectually understood but continues to be emotionally or physiologically activated in the present.
This can happen following experiences that are clearly traumatic, but it can also follow experiences such as bullying, humiliation, rejection, criticism, difficult relationships or periods in which you felt powerless or unsafe.
Present-day situations can then trigger reactions that seem disproportionate to what is actually happening. You may understand rationally that the current situation is different while your emotional or physiological response suggests otherwise.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is one of the approaches I use when past experiences appear to be contributing to present difficulties. It can help the brain process experiences that have remained psychologically active so that they no longer carry the same emotional intensity in the present.
Therapy that understands the professional context.
Having worked with professionals in the City of London and the Emirates for many years, I understand the environments in which my clients operate.
Long hours or workload may be part of the picture, but they rarely explain everything.
Professional identity, responsibility, competition, perfectionism, organisational culture, power, status and the expectation of remaining composed under pressure can all interact with an individual's psychology.
The qualities that enable someone to function extremely effectively within a demanding professional environment can sometimes make it more difficult to recognise when something needs to change.
Understanding this context means that we don't need to treat your professional life as separate from the rest of your psychology.
Over 25 years in psychological practice.
I have over 25 years' experience delivering and researching psychological services across clinical, academic, organisational and private practice settings.
This breadth of experience influences how I work. Rather than beginning with a technique or assuming that a particular diagnosis explains everything, I am interested in understanding the individual person: what has happened, what is happening now, what may be maintaining the difficulty and what will help create change.
My work today brings together extensive psychological experience with a particular understanding of high-achieving professionals and the environments in which they work.
Is therapy the right place to start?
You don't need to know exactly what kind of therapy you need before contacting me.
You may know precisely what you want help with, or you may simply recognise that something isn't working in the way it used to. You do however need to commit to showing up to your sessions on a regular basis. This usually means weekly or fortnightly sessions. The way I operate my diary takes into consideration how busy my clients are, you don't need to commit to the same session every week but you will be expected to show up on a regular basis in person or online.
The first step is to understand what is happening, what you would like to change.
Your options are:
1) Request an Initial Assessment – link to new page
2) Book your Appointments Now:
Self-funded – Minimum Commitment 5 sessions (link to kajabi payment and booking form)
Healthcare Insurance - WPA, CIGNA, ALLIANZ, HEALIX, UNITED HEALTHCARE (link to booking form which can’t be processed until the client adds an authorisation code)
