Loneliness can feel preferable to reaching out for help, but it is the heaviest tears that fall with no-one to witness them. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Introduction

If you’re reading this, I suspect you’re in a place where you’ve decided that you could use some help, and you want someone you can trust to provide it. Maybe you need something quick and focused to help you in a difficult time, or because you don’t know what to do, or maybe you think there are bigger issues going on for you that you want to understand. Whatever is happening, I’d like to help.

So what can I say to help put you at ease? What kind of person am I? The easiest way to describe myself would be to simply say that I’m a good listener - people feel like they can talk to me, but also that they want to. I’m non-judgemental, curious and interested to know what is happening for my clients and I don’t look to place labels on them or pathologise their behaviour. I don’t diagnose people with disorders because I don’t think people are broken in ways that can be labelled, but if you do have an existing diagnosis you want to talk about I will do what I can to help understand what that means for you, how that information is helpful to your healing.

I’m highly able to understand and connect with the emotions of others, I’m open and transparent in my approach, but also able to be analytical about what is happening too. My style of working with people is of course professional, and I am aware of what is appropriate to the needs of the client, but I also think therapy can be a fun and joyful place to explore who we are, it doesn’t have to be a path of broken glass we must walk.

Sometimes people just need to be able to take off whatever mask they feel they need to wear in the world so that they can be seen, accepted and understood. I do my best to make my clients feel comfortable so that when they are challenged it feels like someone trying to help them, not like they are being criticised, judged or attacked. I also think it’s important for clients to have a space where they can simply be, to express their fears or other feelings they don’t believe can be shown elsewhere - if what you need is a place to be emotionally held and contained, but no-one else is doing that, I would like to help.

My approach has been very helpful to previous clients that have dealt with issues such as: 

• Talking about things they feel they can’t share with others and that weigh them down - I feel greatly privileged to be in a position where people feel able to say to me “I’ve never told anyone else this before”
  

• Struggling with harmful and problematic addictions, compulsions and habits that you want to change - if you don’t feel like you’re in control of yourself and it’s making you unhappy, this can change - you are not powerless to change yourself if someone is helping you
  

• Trauma - however big or small it may be, our wounds hurt us until they are healed, and they can be (read below about using IFS for more information on this
  

• Negative self belief - when all our internal voices are harsh, critical and judgemental, we feel powerless and unhappy. That is no way to live
  

• Fear and hopelessness - if you are in a deep and scary hole, and you don’t know how to get out, let me help you climb out
  

• Abusive behaviour, violence and rage - whether you are the victim or the one causing the abuse, I would like to help this change for you. I am not here to judge, I am here to help
  

• Anxiety and intrusive thinking - voices that won’t stop, particularly when you are in bed late at night, or not being able to be calm and not catastrophise
  

• Depression - have you lost the ability to feel joy? Does it feel easier to lay down and hide from a world that hurts you, in which you feel you cannot be happy? This can be changed
  

• Anger - we are often angry to protect ourselves from danger, or sometimes ourselves from our own pain because it’s easier to be angry at others. I want to understand what your anger is telling you and help you learn what is not going right for you; we are never angry for no reason

• Sex and sexuality - exploring who you are, or who you might be if you could be open to it; coming to understand your identity and what you want, and how to get it. Labels can be helpful, but what’s more important to me is who you are and what you want

• HIV positivity - we now live in a U=U world and one with PrEP, but poz people are often stigmatised and shamed for something they never asked for. Let me give you the compassion you deserve if you need to grieve the loss of your negative status
  

• Non-traditional relationship types (including polyamory, blended families, co-parenting outside relationships or other non-monogamous relationships) - I see monogamous and non-monogamous couples, and poly groups (triads, quads, networks etc). Whatever your relationship looks like I want to help you and the ones in it be happy and achieve the goals that you want

• Just generally not feeling happy and not knowing why - if you wake up every day not wanting to leave bed, if you don’t know how to put into words what is wrong, but you know that things aren’t right, maybe you would just like to talk to someone. I would like to see you, listen to you, explore with curiosity what your life is now, and help you dream of a future where you could be happy again, one that we can bring forth together

Walk-in therapy and single session therapy

Are you unsure about what help you need at the moment, or if you even need long-term help? A part of you might say “you need some help” but you may be cautious or a bit scared to commit to something long-term. Maybe you know exactly what you need help with you and you just want to focus on that.

I’m trained in an approach called single session therapy where we come to the meeting as if it will be the only session we’ll have together (whether there are more is something you can decide once it’s over, but we will be working on the basis that we’ll have one). The purpose of this is to give clients the awareness of what support and resources they already have, help them have an outside perspective in a difficult situation, some space to be heard if they don’t have any, or help formulating a solution to a problem they are stuck on.

I’ll ask you to email me some information, no more than a few paragraphs, outlining what is the situation or problem and what would you want the session to give you if it worked out well. You don’t need to provide all the detail of what has happened or is happening, it’s where you are right now and where you want to go that matters. Hopefully this single session will give you the clarity, insight and understanding of what you can already do to deal with the situation that you need. At the end of the session you’ll be asked do you want to go away and digest the session and decide if you want more at a later date (maybe another single one, maybe a longer-term process), do you want me to follow-up with you and you’ll know help is on hand, or do you want to book more sessions then and there? If I am able to accommodate you I will do so; there will be no expectation that there will be another session from me or any pressure or encouragement that you have more.

Walk-in therapy is a form of single session that I offer where you get in touch with me and give me a phone number, and I will call you back to offer you a single session slot as soon as possible within my working calendar, hopefully the same day if that’s possible (check my calendar below to get a sense of when I’m free). Sometimes you need help RIGHT NOW, and if I can see you to offer that I will. Again, if you decided you wanted to see me longer term this would be subject to my ability to take on more clients, but there is always the possibility of further single sessions one at a time.

If you would like either of these kinds of help then email me with either “walk in” or “single session” in the subject line and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can.

Coaching therapy to get what you want quickly

If you have a specific outcome or issue that you want to work on I am able to help. I have experience helping people either identify exactly what is happening if they aren’t certain, or if they are clear on what the issue is then setting out a specific goal that we can work towards. This work is clear and focused and can happen over the course of between 2 and 6 sessions and I make sure that we don’t drift out of the scope of what we set out to do . The purpose of this process it by using a mixture of cognitive processing and internal family systems to clear the blockages.

We start the work with you filling out a short questionnaire before we meet about the thoughts, feelings and beliefs you think are stopping you achieving this by yourself and as best you can scoping the goal you want to achieve, and then we meet for a short number of sessions to begin the work on whatever that is. To help me give you the result you want I would recommend these sessions be 90 minutes but if you don’t want that we can use the regular 60 minute format.

I will be looking to achieve what you want as soon as we practically can, this process is intended to do that and nothing further. If by the end you feel you have identified other issues that I could help you with I can discuss the prospect of us working together more long-term but only if you wish to do so.

A source of help and guidance for men

One of my areas of specialism is working with male identity and issues related to male gender expectations. If you want to discover what kind of man you are, what your masculinity is, I would like to help.

Being a man is simultaneously easy and hard in the modern world. As a gender we are considered privileged, but we also live in a straightjacket of unspoken rules and expectations. We dominate the world and frequently have advantages due to our gender, but we are also constantly under the burden of what we are expected to be, demanded to be, sometimes to the exclusion of who we truly are. Both of these things are true, and reconciling them can be difficult, particularly in the current gender dialogue where men want to be allies to others, but don’t always know how (sometimes are even blamed for trying in the wrong way and left feeling that it we shouldn’t have bothered).

We are told “be a man” but then often that the man we are is not the one we’re supposed to be, whether by society or other men. How can we know how to be a man when it is so challenging, and no-one seems to know what a “real” man is, when there are so many contradictory models? Even our relationship with ourselves is often clouded by what we are taught we should be, including our perceptions and feelings about our own bodies, our erotic desires and sex drives, our hopes and dreams - whatever we do, we’re frequently told we’re doing it wrong, that we need to do it better, until everyone around us is a person to be afraid of, particularly other men (who, sadly, are living in the same dilemma).

This is the prison of the modern man, but the door is not locked, you can leave it if you want, but it requires courage to explore what is outside and that process can be scary. I am not here to judge or lecture you on what kind of man you should be, to tell you to man up, to yell at you to stop being toxic, to blame you for all the problems of the world. I can help you learn who you really are, who you want to be, not what you were told you must be, or how you fail to be what is expected and desired by society and our culture.

In terms of my experience in this area, part of my training was in the Everyman project, a service run by male therapists for male clients who engage in abusive behaviour and want to change, and I am also allied with the Mankind Project which provides connection and support to men by other men. I consider part of my mission to help other men discover who they really are when the straightjacket is removed. When that happens we can find inner peace, and how to be the wonderful, courageous, caring, loving, nurturing, supportive and protective beings we are, whether that be as partners, brothers, fathers, sons, friends or lovers.

If you are a man who thinks they would benefit from therapy (or you know someone else that might) but who is hesitant about seeking it, I am here to help. Maybe you don’t want to be vulnerable, don’t know how to be, or you feel shame or anger and you are afraid you will be blamed for these things too. If that’s the case, please don’t be worried - I am here to help as your brother, I would like to give you my hand and help lift you up. I will give you the space to be seen, heard, cared for and shown compassion, as all men have a right to from one another as part of the brotherhood of man.

You do not have to be alone.

Internal family systems therapy

I’m a practitioner of the modality Internal Family Systems (click the link to see an article explaining how this works) and have completed the level 1 certificate course run by the IFS institute, the organisation that owns and trains the IFS modality globally. I also work as a program assistant helping to facilitate teaching to others training on level 1 courses and am working to progress on the IFS trainer pathway.

This type of therapy is particularly useful if you have several overlapping difficulties, have trauma (however big you think that trauma is compared to that of others, it still hurts) or where it’s unclear for you what is happening, or why, and you don’t know where to begin.

It is a safe, evidence-based, effective process that is complemented by our latest understanding of neuroscience, and it is also simple to start doing immediately and requires no prior learning on your part - you just turn up and let me guide you. It doesn’t require you to experience pain or be retraumatised, and can ultimately help you discover parts of yourself you didn’t know existed (or had forgotten you had). The goal of IFS is not to talk about problems and traumas, it is to show you how to heal those internal wounds yourself, and take ownership of your power to become the leader of your own life.

Because IFS is an experiential therapy and not narrative based, we don’t have to spend months or years talking, analysing or interpreting, we can go straight to where the problems are and start to help them. IFS is able to achieve substantial results within a relatively small number of sessions; if you are nervous about the prospect of committing to a long therapy process then IFS can be very helpful, as clients can get the results they want within a relatively few number of sessions compared to more talk-heavy processes that require lots of historical presentation and subsequent analysis.

Most importantly, it is a therapy where I help YOU work out what is happening for you, it isn’t me who works that out. As the process develops you will learn to lead your internal system of parts, be the one they need to guide and help them, as you were born with the capability to do. It is not a therapy process where I explain to you who you are because I’m the expert, I am merely a guide and someone who wishes to have the privilege to be invited into your world so I can get to understand it, and offer you my perspective on what I find in order that you can better understand yourself (we can’t see the back of our own heads!).

If you are interested to know what a session of IFS looks like you can find a link to my podcast episode here where I talk you through a hypothetical session so you can get a feel for what it looks like.

A path to more

Today we are frequently told to stop dreaming and live in the real world, as if reality and our experience and dreams are somehow opposed to each other. Using that logic, if we don’t like our reality, if it is made up of suffering, then we are being asked to live in that permanently. That is not something anyone should be asked to do!

Many of us don’t know what it is we want from life, struggle to find purpose or meaning, are unfamiliar with the needs of the spirit and what that looks like for them. Maybe you even believe that this is something for other people, that you personally contain no spiritual dimension, that the idea is something ridiculous or absurd and at odds with being able to think rationally and critically.

The real question is: do you feel fulfilled? If you aren’t able to say yes to that question easily, or at all, you may be at a point where you want to explore deeper questions about purpose, your journey and where you may be going. My therapy approach provides space for this.

If this is something you are now curious to explore, or you are already looking for someone to help guide you in order to find answers, or to give you the courage to ask questions, it is my honour to be of assistance. This journey of discovery isn’t like going to a psychic or a medium, I’m not going to channel dead relatives or tell you what you want to hear, and it still uses a structure and has boundaries that resemble more conventional therapy. The course and the heading may be different, but the relationship is still built on my desire to help, and my compassion for the suffering of others.

Whatever framework of belief, faith, or lack thereof you may have, if you are seeking someone who can help with the difficult or more complex questions, it is part of my mission to assist. Please understand, I am not here to give you the answers, or to make you believe my truth, I am simply here to help you discover your truth. I will be welcoming and respectful of whatever you believe, I am not looking to tell you the one truth path, because that is different for each person.

If this is something that you would be interested in please mention this when contacting me or in our consultation/first session so I can properly explore with you what it is you are looking for. Whatever it is you are seeking, I will hear you with openness and respect, and hopefully I will be able to offer you help (and I will be honest if I feel that I am not the right person for the task and help you find someone who is).

Neurodivergence - feeling out of place in the world

If you feel like the world doesn’t understand you, or maybe you don’t fully understand yourself, I’d like to help you explore your potential neuro atypicality that may be making you feel like you don’t fit in, or that you don’t get how things are supposed to work. I have experience working with different kinds of people on the spectrum, but my experience is not about knowing about any one kind of diagnosis but rather being curious and asking “what is it that you need from me? What is it that you’re not getting from others?”. I understand that not everyone is the same, indeed, everyone is different, but for people who can be classified as neuro-atypical there is an even greater sense of difference that can make existing confusing and/or painful.

My goal is not to put you into a box and tell you who you are, it’s to help you discover who you are. If you’ve been wearing a mask to cover your own sense of identity and haven’t felt safe being yourself I would consider it a great privilege to be the person who gets to see what is behind it. I also bring my own experience of being bipolar, itself a type of neuro-atypicality, something that gives me a lived sense of what it is to live in a world of people who insist we must be the same when a big proportion of us are not. I know what that frustration and challenge can be like.

Let me help you.

Non-traditional relationship types or configurations (non-monogamy, poly etc)

I work with couples and relationship groups that are monogamous, but I also bring to my practice a great deal of experience with the subject of non-monogamy and poly. As a poly individual myself I know what it is to have to walk the talk, this knowledge isn’t simply theoretical. I understand that non-monogamy and poly are valid and workable relationships, and that for some people they work better than monogamy. My approach is to try to create an understanding with everyone involved what the relationship is, how it’s not working for the participants, and to create space where we can discuss together how you want it to be.

At the same time, each of us in a relationship brings our own stuff, and at the same time I bring my different therapeutic approaches to help individuals in the relationship understand what is happening for them which is contributing to the difficulties that might be happening. Whatever your relationship looks like I want you to be assured that I will be accepting of it and that my goal is to help you get what you want, I don’t have an agenda around making your relationship look like something that I or society thinks it “should” be.

Where now?

If I seem like someone you would like to work with I’d encourage you to get in touch and have either a free 15 minute consultation by phone or zoom, a walk-in or single session if you want something more focused quickly, or a trial session to see how we fit in a working relationship if you know you’re looking for something longer-term. The first session is simply for you to come and tell me what you want help with and get to know me; you’ll know if I’m the right person for you - it’s no strings and if you don’t think you want to see me after that I can potentially guide you to another therapist that is a better fit for you.

If you want a long-term process and after the first session you’d like to consider more, we will have several further as part of an assessment process (typically up to a maximum of 3, sometimes more) where we decide what you want from the process, how you want to do it, and the things that matter the most to you in approaching it (or the things you DON’T want to happen in it, which can sometimes be just as relevant). I will seek to create a map to where you want to go, and agree with you how we’ll get there together.

Please understand, the assessment is not of you, but more for you to assess me, and see if I am going to give you what you want and need. If by the end of the assessment process you want to continue we’ll form a therapy agreement that confirms this, and we’ll start the work. If not I can maybe offer you some single sessions that give you any remaining help you need, or refer you to another professional who may be better suited to your needs. The final decision as to whether you will work with me is yours - it’s your choice, not mine, the only limitation is whether I have space for long-term clients (which I will be open about at the beginning).

Credentials and security

I’m a qualified counsellor with an NVQ level 4 diploma in therapeutic integrative counselling, which allows me to practice under BACP requirements. This training also required pre-requisite level 3 and 2 certificates in counselling studies , over 100 hours of practical supervised experience with clients, and mandatory therapy for myself so I would graduate in good working order for my clients (and be open to more therapy when I recognise I need it, for myself and my clients).

I have completed the level 1 Internal Family Systems training course which gives me the status of IFS practitioner.

I am a registered member of the BACP (please see my registration number below) and part of my membership is a commitment to regular and ongoing third party supervision every month, and continuing professional development / training of at least 20 hours a year, if not more.

I am also registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and my privacy policy is fully compliant with GDPR principles, including the rights to access information I hold about you, to see anything I have written concerning you, to have your information erased, or to make a complaint if you believe I have not handled your information properly.

My therapy space is in my home in a secure building that will not be interrupted and your privacy and confidentiality is paramount.

How to use this calendar

Below is an integrated version of my calendar that is up to date at all times as it dynamically linked to my own personal calendar.

Use the scroller on the right hand side to go down to my working hours that begin at 130pm - the rest of the time that I don’t work is blocked out. Let me know a time that is free that you want and should be able to book you in. On weeks that I am on leave you will see a fully booked out set of times, use the arrows at the top to go to forward to a week that I am available.

Currently I work between 1.30pm and 7pm Monday to Thursdays, and 1pm to 5pm on Fridays. I am not able to see clients at weekends.

All times where I have existing commitments, such as clients or other meetings, or are times that I don’t work, you will see marked as “busy” in the calendar (this includes weekends). All other space not blocked out is available and you can request to see me.

If you wish to book a 15 minute consultation or first appointment with me please use the calendar first when deciding when you would like to see me to avoid a scheduling conflict.

Please note: telephone / video consultations are 15 minutes and therapy appointments are 50 minutes unless we negotiate for a longer time. If you want an initial appointment it doesn’t have to be at a time that you can do regularly, we can negotiate where in our schedules we can have a regular appointment, and what kind of frequency we agree is right for you (that is generally weekly, but it’s dependent on your needs).

Getting here, charges & payment

My flat which is well-connected with the following tube stations:

• Aldgate East 300m, 5mins

• Aldgate 700m, 10mins

• Whitechapel 700m. 11mins

• Tower Gateway 1,000m, 15mins

Fee structure - Please note I don’t run reduced rate or sliding scale sessions, my prices are as stated below

Initial telephone / video consultation - 15 minutes - free

£90/ therapy hour in person peak time (4pm to 7pm)

£75 / therapy hour in person off-peak (before 4pm)

£135 / 1.5 therapy hours peak time (4pm to 7pm)

£110 / 1.5 therapy hours off-peak (before 4pm)

Types of therapy session I offer

Single session therapy

For walk-in / single session therapy on a one off basis for individuals. There is no obligation or expectation there will be more sessions, these are intended to give you what you need and feel empowered to not have to come back, but you are welcome to ask for more sessions if you decide you wish to either as another single session or as part of a longer process (assuming I have space to take you on). To book a single session therapy appointment, email me

Long-term or fixed-term therapy

For longer-term or fixed number of sessions for individuals weekly at the same time every week until ending of process, unless agreed separately. Once we agree to a long-term process we will scope goals for what we are trying to achieve with clear success outcomes to it will be clear why we’re working together and if we’ve succeeded.

Short-term therapy

For some reason you may only wish to commit to a particular number of sessions. If you are interested in a short-term process we can discuss how long you think you want it to be and build goals and intended outcomes around what we agree is possible in that time.

I accept all major credit and debit cards via Zettle, bank transfers or online payments through Stripe - please note I do not accept cash