Services
Explore a range of therapeutic solutions to support your well-being, specialising in psychotherapy and helping individuals overcome performance anxiety. My dedicated support groups provide a nurturing community for shared experiences, while the engaging talks and workshops empower personal growth and resilience. Discover a compassionate space for healing and self-discovery with my comprehensive services.
Individual Therapy
I offer counselling and psychotherapy to individuals and couples. I also run small groups which provide a supportive environment where members can share similar experiences and benefit from being heard and listened to by others.
£65 for a 50-minute face-to-face or online session
I offer counselling and psychotherapy to individuals both in-person and online. I commonly work with clients who suffer from anxiety or depression, but I have experience working with clients suffering from trauma, OCD, panic attacks, phobias, low moods and feelings of loneliness and low self-esteem. I also work with people who are grieving a loss, who need help with a work or personal problem, who are looking for career growth or personal development, or who are currently experiencing relationship difficulties or family conflicts. Whatever your background, age, gender, orientation or experience, I'd be glad to work with you.
Couples Counselling
Maintaining a healthy, loving relationship takes effort and commitment. When cracks appear, couples counselling can help you take a wider perspective, allowing you to explore the underlying problems and identify what needs to change. Together we can create an approach which treats your relationship as if it were an entity in its own right, and to develop ways in which you can nourish and support so that empathy, understanding and respect between you is restored.
Face-to-face or online sessions
How we can work together during Couples counselling?
We can meet in-person or online. I can explain my approach and we can explore the problem as you see it and reach an agreement on how you can proceed together in a consensual way.
I may suggest that we meet individually for a session which will give an opportunity for reflection away from the other partner. This is helpful when communication and trust may have broken down.
In most cases we will then continue the work with both partners present, which will focus on restoring a close, loving relationship.
We will continue to develop deeper communication through open and honest dialogue and honing listening skills. We will explore themes which may underlie your relationship, historical aspects of your situation and beliefs and values you may hold. This will enable you to rebuild trust, accept differences and identify and build on strengths which already exist in your relationship.
Group Therapy
Group therapy is a wonderful way to extend the reach and benefits of therapy to as wide a range of people as possible. It is very cost effective and enables individuals to share their resources with others and to try out new ways of relating in a safe and supportive environment. For those who may feel isolated by a particular condition or situation in their life, connecting with others with similar experiences can establish a reciprocal support network which can be very restorative and life enhancing. Other benefits of group working:
Being heard and listened to by others.
Gaining insight not only by interventions from the therapist but from interactions with other members of the group.
Learning coping strategies from other group members.
Receiving honest and clear feedback can encourage growth and positive change.
£30
Sessions are usually for 2 hours meeting either weekly or monthly. Please contact me to register your interest.
How my groups are structured?
My groups are always small – between 4 and 8 members.
Cost. I always aim to extend therapy to as many people as possible so will reflect this in my pricing. I’m always happy to have a discussion so please feel able to chat with me about it.
I am looking to set up both a mens and a mixed group locally. I welcome ideas for groups from those who may be interested, and I will reach out to the local community with my own suggestions in the new year.
Life Coaching
A holistic approach which encompasses all aspects of your life and helps guide you to find your own answers and achieve the outcomes you want.
What I bring as a Life Coach?
A commitment to enable you to achieve clear and beneficial results by exploring all perspectives of your situation.
£65 for a 50-minute face-to-face or online session
How we will work together?
I use an integrated approach which combines elements of psychotherapy and Neuro-linguistic programming. We can work in-person, online, or with a blend of both.
Life coaching is based in the here and now. The present perspective provides our context for any past reflections or future orientated desires. It is important that we keep to a clearly defined direction of travel. If serious issues from the past emerge then it may be necessary to discuss if specialist therapy or counselling would be more appropriate or beneficial.
By raising awareness and promoting a deeper understanding of your situation we identify your desired outcomes and plan an approach towards achieving positive results.
We may spend some time defining the nature of your outcomes and investigating obstacles that may impede you from reaching your desired goals.
We will then explore any conflicts that may arise between your desires and your value and belief systems. These systems may have developed over time as adaptive ways of being in the world, so it is important to assess what level of support they currently provide before we consider any changes.
Ours will be a collaborative journey based on my belief that you have all the resources you need to become the person you want to be. Together we can help you to restore balance and achieve your goals.
Overcoming Performance Anxiety
A therapeutic approach to dealing with the stress response triggered by public performance on stage:
Concert hall & auditions / exam recitals.
Theatre & auditions.
Public Speaking & Work presentations.
£65 for a 50-minute face-to-face or online session
My own experience as a performer, playing on stage to large audiences and in audition situations in front of panels eventually left me riven with anxiety and unable to express myself or give a true representation of my abilities.
Desperate to lessen the intrusive, negative thoughts and symptoms of stress expressed in our bodies, we often resort to stop-gap, fire-fighting solutions such as beta blockers or alcohol. These may get us through the immediate emergency but at what cost?
Performance anxiety is a complex, multi-dimensional syndrome in which a person sees the present environmental context as dangerous and posing a threat to personal safety. We respond in a perfectly natural way with defence systems designed over millions of years to kick in when a danger to life is perceived by our brains. This results in the shutdown of non-essential functions which include parts of the brain which control reasoning, memory and fine motor abilities. All of these must be working at an executive level if we are to give an elegant, self-assured and eloquent account of ourselves in a performance, presentational or sporting setting.
Because we have learnt to interpret our environment in this way over many years there is no miracle intervention which can provide an instant cure for our suffering. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that we can begin to see some positive changes happen quickly once we start a process of therapeutic self-discovery. This approach will move you towards a compassionate understanding of your experience and offers an opportunity to explore the rich resources we all have at our disposal. It is essential to pace our work carefully and to attend to the situation gently and with kindness. Our ability to express ourselves as performers reflects intrinsically how we have constructed our core sense of identity and how we have learnt to perceive our self-worth and sense of belonging in the world. There may be episodes of trauma attached to our situation which have been compounded by multiple similar events which we push ourselves through because quitting seems impossible to contemplate. We can't give up on the thing which defines who we are!
I will use techniques that:
Quieten the external noise which assails us from our environment and intrudes into our thoughts as negative self-commentary.
Stimulate communication between our felt, embodied experience and our cognitive processes.
Encourages greater integration across our brain hemispheres and away from the survival centres of the brain.
Enable you to reconnect with and enjoy being in the here and now of your felt experience rather than becoming stranded in a fearful past or an anxious future.
Help you gain control of how you experience the world by expanding your window of tolerance and developing your confidence so you can mine your creative resources to react elegantly and spontaneously in reaction to novelty and change.
Talks and Workshops
I will offer occasional talks that explore topics which affect us all and discuss how we can learn to cope and increase our resilience. Planned talks include: What can therapy do for me? Exploring anxiety, Exploring depression.
Workshops offer an interactive experience which gives an opportunity to engage creatively with new techniques, skills and learning strategies.
The Performance Excellence workshop enables participants to try out new approaches to performance through experimentation, behavioural repatterning exercises and developmental activities in a safe and supportive environment.
Other workshop ideas are in development.
Subsidised rates.
It is important not to be put off seeking help for monetary reasons. If you will struggle to afford the rates above, I am happy to negotiate. Also, there are often free treatments available from the NHS or other organisations which I would be able to advise you about. Please get in touch to discuss.