Anxiety, low mood and feeling emotionally overwhelmed. Low self-esteem, self-doubt and the feeling that you are never quite enough. Perfectionism, people-pleasing, burnout and chronic stress. Difficulty regulating emotions, feeling easily overwhelmed, or becoming disconnected from yourself and others. You may understand logically why you feel the way you do, yet still find yourself repeating the same patterns. Therapy can offer a space to slow things down, understand what is happening underneath and begin responding to yourself with greater awareness and compassion.
Relationships are at the heart of much of my work. You may struggle with trust, intimacy, communication or feeling secure in relationships. Perhaps you find yourself becoming anxious when someone pulls away, staying in relationships that leave you feeling unseen, or repeatedly being drawn into similar relationship dynamics. We can explore attachment patterns, childhood relational experiences, boundaries, intimacy, rejection, abandonment and the ways earlier relationships can shape what we expect from others. This can also include recovering from emotionally difficult, controlling or abusive relationships and rebuilding a stronger sense of yourself afterwards.
There are times in life when the person we have always been no longer quite fits. Relationship endings, divorce, parenting, career changes, grief, ageing and other major transitions can leave us questioning who we are and what we want next. Therapy can provide space to explore identity, belonging, confidence and self-acceptance, as well as bigger questions around meaning, purpose and the kind of life and relationships you want to create.
The experiences we have growing up can quietly shape the way we see ourselves and relate to others long into adulthood. Perhaps you learnt to keep the peace, look after everyone else, hide your feelings or work hard for approval. Those strategies may once have helped you feel safe or connected, but later they can leave you struggling with boundaries, self-worth, rejection or relationships where your own needs become lost. Together, we can become curious about where those patterns began and whether they still belong in the life you are creating now.
Many people come to therapy following a later ADHD diagnosis, or after years of feeling that they experience the world differently without quite understanding why.
We might explore rejection sensitivity, emotional intensity, overwhelm, masking, burnout, difficulty asking for help, self-criticism and the impact ADHD can have on relationships.
A diagnosis can sometimes bring relief, but it can also lead to looking back at earlier experiences differently. There may be grief for the parts of yourself that were misunderstood, criticised or learnt to adapt in order to fit in.
Our work can include developing a more compassionate understanding of those younger parts of yourself, recognising old emotional wounds and finding ways of responding differently when they are activated in the present.