Questions · Therapy in Shoreditch & Hackney

It starts with a free call of fifteen to thirty minutes, so you can get a feel for me and ask anything. In the first full session I’ll be curious about what brought you now, what your life is like, and what you hope for, even if you can’t yet put it into words. It isn’t a test and it isn’t a commitment. It’s an introduction, for both of us.

That’s more common than you’d think, and it’s fine. You don’t need to prepare or arrive with a neat story. Bring whatever is on your mind that week, however small or tangled it seems. Silences are welcome too; often something important lives in them.

The relationship matters more than any method, so it’s worth taking seriously. Notice how you feel talking to me: whether you feel heard, whether you can be honest, whether I’m curious rather than quick to judge. If it doesn’t fit, I’d rather we say so and I can help you find someone who does.

Perhaps. A lot of therapy focuses on managing symptoms. Depth work is slower and looks underneath, at the patterns that keep repeating and where they come from. It also helps to talk openly about what didn’t work before; that is often where we begin.

Psychodynamic therapy explores how past experience and unconscious patterns show up in the present: in relationships, in moods, in the choices we keep making. Jungian therapy pays attention to dreams, images and symbols, but more importantly to who you are becoming. The aim isn’t only to manage symptoms, but to change how you relate to yourself and others.

Not unless you want to. We start with what is alive for you now. The past tends to find its own way into the room, usually through the present, and when it does we follow it at your pace.

From a Jungian perspective, dreams are the psyche speaking in its own language. They often show what we can’t yet see in waking life. You don’t need to remember your dreams to work with me, but if you do, they can open doors that conversation alone can’t.

I’m not a silent therapist; I’ll engage, ask questions and be honest with you. Sometimes that includes something practical. But the deeper aim is for you to find your own authority, rather than borrow mine.

It can happen. Looking at things we’ve kept at a distance can stir them up for a while. We go at your pace, and if something feels too much, saying so in the room is part of the work, not a failure of it.

Then I’d like to hear about it. Frustration, disappointment, even anger towards me are welcome in the room. Old patterns often show up between us, and when they do they can be understood rather than just talked about.

Short-term therapy usually lasts three to six months and suits a specific, focused issue. I work at the longer end: most people work with me for a year or longer, because the deeper, lasting change that depth work aims for takes time.

There’s no fixed timetable. We decide on it together, when it feels right to you. The ending itself is often an important part of the work, a chance to say goodbye well.

It is how I think about the shape of the work. Descend: we stop managing the surface and go down into what is underneath, the feeling you have been outrunning rather than the story about it. Contain: the relationship becomes strong enough to hold something intense without it shattering, so it can change. Integrate: what we discover finds its way back into your ordinary life, at work, in love, with friends.

Simply the parts of us that act before we have thought about them: the reactions that surprise us, the patterns we swear we will not repeat and then do. It is not a sinister basement. It is more like a quieter, older intelligence, and therapy is a way of getting to know it.

Jung’s word for the parts of ourselves we have learned to disown. Often that includes anger, need or envy, but it also includes gifts: warmth, ambition, playfulness, the voice we were told was too much. Shadow work is not about becoming darker. It is about becoming more complete.

Because, at some point, they made sense. Patterns that look self-defeating now were once ways of staying safe or staying close to someone. Therapy looks at what a pattern is protecting, so you no longer have to keep living it out to be heard.

The words overlap, and both can help. In general, counselling tends to be shorter and focused on a particular difficulty, while psychotherapy works more deeply with long-standing patterns, relationships and sense of self. I offer both, and we can decide together what fits.

CBT works with thoughts and behaviours in the present and can be very useful for specific problems. Depth therapy is slower and more exploratory: it asks why a difficulty keeps returning, and what it means. Many people come to me after CBT, wanting to understand rather than only to manage.

Not in a religious sense, and you do not need any beliefs to work with me. But Jungian psychology takes meaning, symbol and the inner life seriously. If spirituality matters to you, there is room for it here. If it does not, there is no pressure for it to.

Yes, and it’s work I care about. Many of the people I see are neurodivergent adults, often diagnosed later in life, or still wondering whether ADHD or autism explains why some things have always felt harder than they should. Therapy here is a place to make sense of your own story, without having to mask, and to find ways of living that fit how your mind works. You don’t need a diagnosis to start. There’s more on the ADHD & Autism page.

Yes. Individual therapy can change a relationship a great deal, because it changes how you show up in it. If you would both like to come, I also offer couples therapy.

Yes. I work to the BACP’s ethical framework. Like all registered therapists I have regular supervision, where work is discussed without identifying details. The only exceptions are a serious risk of harm to you or someone else, or where the law requires it, and I would always try to talk with you first.

Yes. As well as seeing clients in person at Leonard House in Shoreditch, a short trip from across Hackney, I offer sessions online by secure video.

I charge a set fee each month, a little like a membership. If you can’t make a session, I’ll do my best to offer another time, or we can meet online instead. It means we can focus on the work rather than on managing schedules.

Yes. I accept Vitality and WPA; Aviva and AXA are coming soon. Check with your insurer before we start, and mention your provider when you get in touch.

Yes. I always hold a number of sliding-scale places. If cost is a barrier, just mention it when we speak.

If you are at risk, please contact your GP, call NHS 111, or ring Samaritans on 116 123 at any time. In an emergency, call 999.