How I can support you

What people often describe

• —A mind that will not switch off, especially at night
• —Physical symptoms: a tight chest, restlessness, disturbed sleep, stomach trouble
• —Constant anticipation of what might go wrong
• —Avoiding calls, conversations, or opportunities because of what they might bring
• —Feeling permanently braced, even when nothing is actually happening

How therapy works with it

Anxiety and stress are two different things, and telling them apart changes what actually helps. Stress is a response to a demand you can usually name, and it eases when the demand passes. Anxiety anticipates threat and tends to persist regardless, finding a new object as soon as the last one resolves.

In sessions we begin by mapping your particular pattern: what sets it off, what it promises you, and what it costs. From there the work usually combines cognitive behavioural techniques, which examine and test anxious predictions rather than simply arguing with them, with grounding and mindfulness practices that lower the physical baseline enough for the thinking work to be possible. Where avoidance has narrowed your life, we rebuild it in steps small enough to actually take.

What people often describe

• —Waking up tired regardless of how long you slept
• —Things you used to enjoy feeling oddly flat
• —Withdrawing from people, then feeling worse for being alone
• —Harsh, tired self-criticism running in the background
• —Getting through the day rather than living it

How therapy works with it

Low mood is rarely just sadness. More often it is a slow narrowing: less energy, less contact, fewer of the things that used to give the week its shape, and a running commentary that reads the narrowing as proof of personal failure.

Therapy works on both ends of that loop. We look at the thinking patterns that keep the commentary going, and at the same time work on gently rebuilding activity and contact, because waiting to feel motivated before doing anything is a trap that keeps low mood in place. We also make room for whatever is underneath, which is sometimes grief, sometimes anger, and sometimes something that has never been said out loud.

If low mood has lasted for weeks, is severe, or is accompanied by thoughts of harming yourself, that is a reason to seek help promptly rather than to wait, and it may be appropriate to involve a doctor or psychiatrist alongside counselling.

What people often describe

• —The same argument on repeat, with different subject matter each time
• —Conversations that have gone quiet rather than loud
• —Feeling unseen, unheard, or alone inside a relationship
• —Difficulty saying what you need without it turning into conflict
• —Something that happened and was never really resolved
• —Strain with family, in-laws, friends, or at work rather than with a partner

How therapy works with it

Most recurring conflict is not about the thing being argued over. Underneath it is usually something more constant: feeling unimportant, feeling controlled, feeling unsafe, feeling taken for granted. Once that layer becomes visible, the surface arguments tend to lose a good deal of their charge.

I work with individuals on relationship difficulties, and with couples together. In couples sessions the aim is not to establish who was right; it is to help both people be heard properly, to make the pattern between you visible, and to build practical skills: raising something difficult without it escalating, repairing after a fight, making requests rather than complaints, and distinguishing a disagreement that needs solving from one that needs accepting.

Family sessions are also available where the difficulty sits across a wider set of relationships.

What people often describe

• —Tiredness that a weekend, or even a holiday, does not touch
• —Growing cynicism about work you used to care about
• —Doubting your own competence at something you were good at
• —Irritability with the people around you, and guilt about it afterwards
• —Getting through the evening with a screen and a drink rather than a life

How therapy works with it

Burnout is not a hard week. It is what accumulates when sustained demand meets insufficient recovery over months, and it is disproportionately common in conscientious people who absorb extra work and find it difficult to say no.

The work is practical. We stabilise the basics first, then map which pressures are genuinely structural and which are being maintained by beliefs such as "if I stop, everything falls apart". Boundaries come next, which is usually the hardest part, along with learning to tolerate the guilt that follows a no. Where the honest conclusion is that something external has to change, therapy is a good place to think that through without panic.

What people often describe

• —An internal voice that is harsher with you than you would ever be with anyone else
• —Discounting achievements and waiting to be found out
• —Difficulty accepting praise, or difficulty asking for anything
• —Shrinking yourself to keep other people comfortable
• —Deciding what you want by working out what others expect

How therapy works with it

Low self-esteem is usually learned rather than innate. Somewhere, a set of conclusions formed about what you are worth and what you have to do to earn it, and those conclusions have gone on running long after the situation that produced them ended.

Therapy works on making those beliefs explicit, examining where they came from and whether they still hold, and then testing them in practice. Alongside that, we work on the concrete skills that confidence actually rests on: setting boundaries, tolerating disapproval, making requests, and letting a mistake be a mistake rather than evidence about your character.

What people often describe

• —A change you chose that still feels like a loss
• —Feeling unmoored after a breakup, a move, a job change, or a bereavement
• —Not recognising the life you have built, or the person living it
• —Pressure from family or culture that pulls against what you want
• —Being unable to make a decision, so circumstances make it for you

How therapy works with it

Transitions unsettle more than logistics. They disturb the story you tell about who you are, and that disturbance often arrives some months after the event itself, when everyone else has moved on and assumes you have too.

Sessions give you space to grieve what ended, including the parts you wanted to end, and to work out what you actually want rather than what you are expected to want. Where a decision is stuck, we look at what is really being weighed, which is frequently not the options on the table but a fear underneath them.