About Counselling and Psychotherapy
People seek counselling for a variety of reasons, ranging from a specific current problem to complex long-term difficulties. Often they are prompted to seek help by a present crisis. Whatever your reason for seeking counselling, in my practice you can expect to be treated with respect and empathy in a safe, supportive and confidential setting. You will be encouraged to explore your feelings and give voice to anything that feels difficult, painful or unresolved. We may examine your thinking and behavioural patterns and your core beliefs about yourself and the world in order to gain insight into where they come from. You may decide that they are no longer serving you well and I will help you to replace them with more useful beliefs and healthier behaviour. At times you may be encouraged to do some work between the sessions at home. Ultimately my aim will be to support you through your difficulties and make the changes that you want, so that you could live life that you want, with more self-awareness and self-acceptance, clarity, resilience, fulfillment and meaning. The length of therapy would depend on you and the complexity of the presenting issues that you bring and this would become clearer after the first couple of sessions. It can range from shorter-term, goal specific work (12 sessions) to long-term and open-ended therapy.
Working with Disordered Eating
One of my particular professional interests and specialties is working with people with Eating Disorders, various forms of disordered eating, body image and weight issues.
As a woman counsellor, what drew me to work in the field of eating disorders, weight and body image issues is their prevalence in today’s society, particularly among women. I was becoming aware of a constant stream of images of impossible standards of beauty and of the messages by the media and the advertising industry that our bodies, and ourselves, are either too much or not enough, but never good enough. I felt that they often played upon our deeper insecurities and echoed our negative core beliefs about ourselves which we carried from our childhood. It saddened me that generations of women and young girls, but increasingly men too, were made to feel like this and some went to dangerous lengths in order to change and control their bodies.
In my therapeutic work my intention is to create a safe space and a therapeutic relationship based on empathy and trust, within which you could feel free to explore and make sense of your difficulties with food and your body and learn techniques for alleviating them, but also explore who you are beyond food, eating and your body image. Metaphorically speaking, I’m also there in the therapy room holding a mirror, with the aim that you will begin to see yourself more realistically and more fully, with more acceptance and more compassion. I am interested in exploring the roots of the your difficult relationship with food and your body, as well as helping you manage and work on the emotional, cognitive, behavioural and nutritional aspects of that difficulty. My aim is to help you begin to view food as a way of nourishing and looking after yourself, to improve your sense of value and self-esteem and to support you in finding healthier ways of expressing your emotions and needs through the relationship with others, rather than through food and various ways of controlling your body.
In my work I use a holistic, integrative approach, which incorporates my psychodynamic and attachment-based, as well as cognitive-behavioural therapy training, but I am also influenced by mindfulness approaches and feminist psychotherapists and writers.
Whether you have been struggling with overeating, purging, restricting, poor body image or weight management, and whether your difficulties are mild or a fully developed Eating disorder that has overtaken your life, I can help you on your way to recovery and a healthy relationship with your body and food.
The issues that I work with include: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder, Emotional eating, Restrictive eating, OSFED, Obesity and Weight management.
Sessions and Fees
During the initial contact via phone or email I will arrange an initial appointment for you as soon as possible. This first session is an opportunity for us to meet, complete an assessment and for you to get the sense of how I work so that we could decide whether further sessions would be beneficial to you.
The fee for a 50 minute session ranges form £75 to £90, depending on a session type and the location.
I occasionally have some spaces available for reduced fee sessions, for clients who can’t afford my full fee. Please contact me for current availability.
I ask clients to one-week notice for cancellations. All unplanned cancellations are charged.
I offer face-to-face and online session via Google Meet. I also have some availability for outdoor, walk-and-talk therapy in larger parks in SE London.
I also facilitate Bibliotherapy Groups, currently held in SE London. Please get in touch to find out more.