Perhaps something in your life has become difficult, repetitive or painful, and you have reached a point where you want to understand it more deeply.
You may have had therapy before. You may already be thoughtful, self-aware and able to reflect on yourself and your relationships. You may understand where some of your patterns came from.
And yet, understanding something doesn't always mean that we are free from it.
You may find yourself repeating things you don't really want to repeat. You may struggle with anxiety, self-criticism, relationships, intimacy, confidence or a sense of not quite knowing who you are.
Perhaps you have become very good at adapting to other people while losing touch with yourself.
Or perhaps you are functioning well on the outside but, when you become quiet, something feels empty, disconnected or strangely absent.
You may find yourself asking:
What do I actually want?
Why do I keep doing this?
Who am I underneath all of this?
Sometimes we become so accustomed to trying to get things right that we lose contact with the experience of simply being ourselves.
Therapy can offer a different kind of space.
Staying with What Is Here
I don't see psychotherapy as simply identifying what is wrong with you and then trying to fix it.
I am interested in what happens when we become genuinely curious about our experience.
What happens when you feel anxious?
What happens when you want someone to like you?
What happens when you want to withdraw?
What happens when one part of you desperately wants something while another part is frightened of it?
Rather than deciding that one part of you is healthy and another is unhealthy, we can begin to get to know what is actually happening.
You might sometimes feel powerful and sometimes worthless.
You might want intimacy and then want to escape from it.
You might long to be seen while simultaneously wanting to hide.
You don't necessarily have to decide which of these experiences is the "real" you.
We can learn to stay in relationship with all of them.
There is a Buddhist image that I find particularly helpful: imagine sitting quietly in the centre of a room with the doors and windows open, allowing whatever comes to visit to be seen.
Thoughts come.
Feelings come.
Memories come.
Fears come.
Desires come.
Stories about ourselves come.
And they change.
The invitation isn't to get rid of them. It is to become increasingly able to remain present while they are here.
"Put one chair in the centre." - Ajahn Chah
I often think of psychotherapy in this way: creating enough space to notice what comes and goes within us, without having to believe it, fight it, or get rid of it.
Beneath the Patterns
My Core Process training has given me a particular understanding of psychotherapy: that beneath the patterns, defences and adaptations through which we have learned to live, there can remain something more fundamental in us.
I think of this less as an idealised "true self" that we need to discover, and more as an underlying capacity for awareness, aliveness, compassion and connection.
You don't have to become a different person in order to become more fully yourself.
Sometimes the work is about becoming aware of the ways you have learned to leave yourself.
Sometimes it is about meeting parts of yourself that have been pushed away, judged or misunderstood.
Sometimes it is about discovering that a feeling you have spent years trying to avoid can actually be experienced and survived.
And sometimes it is about discovering that beneath a familiar story about who you are, there is more space than you had realised.
This doesn't mean that difficult experiences are imaginary, or that everything can simply be changed through awareness.
Life can be painful. Relationships can wound us. Our histories matter.
But I don't believe that the patterns we have developed are the whole of who we are.
Understanding Where You Came From
Some of the ways we relate to ourselves and other people began very early.
We learned how to belong, how to seek approval, how to protect ourselves, how to manage other people's feelings and how to stay safe within our relationships.
These adaptations can continue long after the circumstances that created them have changed.
They may appear as people-pleasing, withdrawal, self-criticism, difficulty trusting, fear of intimacy, anxiety, perfectionism or repeatedly finding yourself in familiar kinds of relationships.
We can become curious about these patterns without blaming ourselves for having developed them.
What did this way of being make possible?
What was it protecting?
What happens when you no longer have to rely on it in quite the same way?
The aim isn't to get rid of these parts of yourself.
It is to develop a different relationship with them.
The Therapeutic Relationship
For me, psychotherapy is not something I do to you.
It is something we discover together.
I pay close attention to what happens between us, as well as to what you bring into the room. Sometimes something that has been difficult to experience elsewhere in your life can begin to be experienced differently within a therapeutic relationship.
We can slow things down.
We can notice what happens in your body.
We can stay with experiences that don't yet have words.
We can become curious about contradictions rather than rushing to resolve them.
And we can allow uncertainty to be part of the work.
You don't have to arrive knowing exactly what you want from therapy.
In fact, "I don't know" can be a very important place to begin.
Becoming More Fully Yourself
Becoming more fully yourself doesn't necessarily mean becoming more confident, more productive or more certain.
It may mean becoming more intimate with your own experience.
It may mean being able to remain present when you feel uncomfortable rather than immediately abandoning yourself.
It may mean recognising when an old pattern is taking over without automatically following it.
It may mean discovering that you can hold apparently conflicting parts of yourself without having to choose between them.
And it may mean becoming increasingly able to meet yourself - including the parts you find difficult - with curiosity rather than judgement.
For me, this is where psychological work and spiritual wisdom meet.
You don't need to be Buddhist or have any particular spiritual beliefs to work with me. My practice is grounded in Core Process psychotherapy, which integrates Buddhist psychology and contemplative awareness with Western psychodynamic, humanistic and existential approaches.
I am interested in what becomes possible when we stop treating ourselves as a problem to be solved and begin developing a deeper relationship with the person who is actually here.
LGBTQ+ / Queer Inclusive
I welcome clients across the LGBTQ+ and queer communities, and I am comfortable exploring questions of sexuality, identity, belonging, relationships and authenticity openly in our work.
You don't need to arrive with a particular identity or agenda. We can work with whatever is important to you.
The More-Than-Human World
I am also training in Wild Therapy and increasingly interested in the relationship between our inner lives and the living world around us.
For me, this isn't separate from the psychological work. It is another way of becoming curious about what happens when we remember that we are not isolated individuals, but living beings in relationship with other people, places and the more-than-human world.
This work is developing alongside my existing psychotherapy practice rather than replacing it.
When Loss Needs to Be Marked
“Grief is love that has nowhere to go.”
- Roshi Joan Halifax
Loss can change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Sometimes, when something important has been lost but there has been no opportunity to properly acknowledge it, grief can remain suspended within us.
I think there can be something important about marking what has happened: allowing a loss to be recognised, felt and given its place in our lives.
This doesn't mean turning suffering into something positive, or trying to find a lesson in every painful experience.
Rather, when we are able to acknowledge a loss as part of our life story, it can gradually become something we can live with, rather than something we have to live against.
What was once only a wound may, over time, also become a source of tenderness, wisdom, connection or a deeper appreciation of what matters.
The loss remains a loss.
But our relationship with it can change.
How We Can Work Together
I offer depth-oriented psychotherapy for people who want more than strategies for managing their symptoms.
You may be looking for a space where you can slow down, understand yourself more deeply and begin to relate differently to your thoughts, feelings, patterns and relationships.
You don't need to have everything worked out before you come.
We can begin with whatever is happening for you now.
My intention isn't to turn you into an idealised version of yourself.
It is to help create the conditions in which you can become more deeply aware of yourself - and discover what becomes possible when you no longer have to be quite so far away from your own experience.
Sessions are 60 minutes and usually take place weekly.
I offer face-to-face psychotherapy in Cardiff, as well as online sessions.
Fee: £70 per session.
If something here resonates with you, you're welcome to get in touch.
We can arrange an initial conversation and see whether working together feels like a good fit.
