I am a qualified counsellor who has lived it too: therapy helped me through my own period of severe anxiety and depression between 2016 and 2018. My therapist didn’t tell me what to think or what to do, and I won’t do that either. Good therapy is about empathy, trust, safety and time. From this foundation, insights can emerge that help you see or feel things in different ways.

In 2016, I had a work-based, stress-induced nervous breakdown. It was frightening, confusing and happened very quickly. I had no mental health history before this (many thought I was ‘the last person they expected’ to have a breakdown). In January, I was busy growing a software business and skills training company in the legal sector. By May, I was in a hospital psychiatric ward following a build up of stress that turned into chronic anxiety, panic attacks and severe depression. 

My gradual recovery over more than two years was nurtured through talking therapy, mindfulness practice and the love of family and friends. It has been underpinned since then by an ever increasing awareness of my default tendencies, the edges of my physical and mental limits and how to maintain balance whilst remaining ambitious (learning to let go and pull back when I need to).

Life can be hard. I offer no silver bullets or magic wands. Instead, I will create a safe, structured space for you to explore your own reality, re-wire old habits and acquire new insights and capacities to respond differently to difficulty.