Therapy options

When coaching is not enough

Most of the people I work with have already tried the obvious things. They are intelligent, self-aware and used to solving problems. They have read the books. Some have worked with coaches. Many manage demanding lives that depend on them staying functional.

Coaching works with what you do. Therapy works with who you are when you do it. The two are not in competition; they answer different questions.

Coaching is forward-facing, goal-oriented and bounded by what is consciously available. Therapy can go where coaching cannot: into the material underneath the patterns, the early shaping that still influences adult choices, the parts of experience that have been subtly held outside of awareness.

For people whose competence is not in question, this deeper level of work is often where the real change happens.

What brings people here

Burnout and sustained pressure

You are still delivering, and from the outside things may look fine. But sleep, patience, motivation or concentration are wearing thin, and the body has started to register what the mind has been overriding. The strategies that once worked – pushing through, working harder, taking a short break and resetting – no longer restore you. By this point, the issue is rarely just workload. Something in the way life is being carried needs attention.

Patterns that keep returning

Some difficulties repeat across situations: the same conflict in relationships, the same reaction that feels stronger than the moment requires, the same difficulty with boundaries, authority, intimacy, anger or self-trust. These patterns are often intelligent adaptations to earlier experience, but at some point, they begin to narrow in adult life. Therapy gives space to understand what the pattern has protected, what it now costs, and what else becomes possible.

Life transitions and loss of meaning

A role ending, a relationship shifting, children leaving, a parent dying, a body changing, a move, a loss, or a decision that may reshape the next decade. These moments can unsettle identity, purpose and belonging. Work that once felt meaningful may start to feel hollow; a life that looks successful on paper may no longer feel quite like your own. Transitions, chosen or imposed, invite a kind of reflection that ordinary life rarely allows.

Relationships under pressure

Sustained responsibility rarely stays at work. Over time it can wear at the closest relationships, until two capable people slowly lose sight of each other. The issue is often not lack of care, but the repeated ways conversations fail, needs go unspoken, or pressure enters the relationship in disguised form. Individual or couples work can help you understand the pattern, speak more clearly, and decide what needs to change.

EMDR

I am a trained EMDR practitioner. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is a structured, evidence-based approach to trauma and overload, and a useful option when talking has reached its limit.

Some experiences are never fully processed at the time. The mind files them away unresolved, and they keep their charge: a reaction out of proportion to the moment, a vigilance that will not switch off, a memory that still tightens the chest years later. In capable, high-functioning people this often goes unrecognised, registering as stress or overload rather than as trauma aftermath.

EMDR works without requiring you to describe the event in detail. While you hold an aspect of the memory in mind, I guide a form of bilateral stimulation, such as gentle eye movements, sound or tapping, that helps the brain reprocess what was left stuck. Over time the memory loses its intensity and stops intruding on the present.

It is recommended by the World Health Organisation and by NICE in the UK for post-traumatic stress, and it also helps with anxiety, performance under pressure, and long-standing negative beliefs about oneself. I use it on its own or within longer therapy, depending on what we are working on.

Relationship therapy

Sustained responsibility rarely stays at work. The patience, attention and presence a relationship needs are often what suffer first. Over time, two people can run a household with great competence while gradually losing sight of each other.

Much of my work with couples is about how you talk to each other. When the same conversation keeps ending in the same place, the problem is usually not the subject but the way it gets raised, heard and answered. I help you change that: to say what you actually mean, to hear what your partner actually means, and to stay in the room when it gets difficult. You leave with practical tools to use at home, so that in time, almost any subject, including the ones you have been stepping around, can be talked through rather than fought over.

I also work with individuals thinking about a relationship on their own. Together, we look at how each of you reached this point, why the same difficulties keep returning, and what could change. For some couples, the work leads to repairing the relationship; for others, to parting more kindly.

Sessions for couples last 60 or 90 minutes. My responsibility is to both partners and to the relationship, so each person has equal time, attention, and space to be heard.

Walk and talk therapy

Some conversations move more easily when you are not sitting face-to-face. Walking side by side, outdoors, can loosen something a consulting room sometimes holds in place. For people who spend their days in meetings and on screens, an hour in the open air is its own relief.

We walk a quiet route at Cuckmere Haven and other places in the South Downs National Park at an unhurried pace, with the same confidentiality and attention as in any session. Walking suits people who think more clearly in motion, or who find movement easier than stillness.

Clinical supervision

I offer consultative supervision to experienced therapists and counsellors, particularly those working with trauma, burnout, or sustained responsibility. A considered space to think about the work and what you carry as the clinician. It draws on almost two decades of clinical practice, substantial experience of teaching at post-master's level, and UKCP accreditation. Online across the UK and in person in Lewes.

For organisations and businesses

Looking for organisational or team support? I also work with companies and leadership teams under sustained pressure.

This work is based on the ADAPT model, developed over 4 years while working with international organisations in Kyiv, during the ongoing war.