My Commitment to You
Why I do this work, how I think and what you can expect from me
My history
I think one of the things that led me to psychotherapy is that I’ve never been very good at small talk. I’ve always been interested in what is really going on for people and what lies underneath the things we say and do.
Friends sometimes joke that meeting me for coffee means, “we’re all going to get therapy with a cup of coffee”.
My interest in psychotherapy became much more personal after experiencing counselling myself. At the time, I was struggling to make my own relationship work and didn’t know how to change what was happening between us.
That experience changed much more than my relationship. It changed the direction of my life. I retrained as a psychotherapist and eventually chose to specialise in working with couples.
For the past 15 years, I’ve worked exclusively with couples.
Why I do this work
I didn’t grow up with a particularly good model of what a healthy relationship looked like. I made mistakes, plenty of them. Yet I could only do what I knew how to do. Counselling helped me understand what my relationship needed from me and develop the ability to give it.
It may sound corny, but it was so life changing I wanted others to benefit as I had, realising there must be countless others suffering for the same reasons.
It’s why this work remains so personal to me.
My approach and beliefs
I called my practice Whole Psychology because I believe meaningful change comes from understanding the whole person: what you feel, what you need, the experiences that have shaped you and how these influence your relationships.
Therapy needs to make a genuine difference in your life.
A safe space to talk matters. So do practical tools and new ways to communicate. But when the same difficulties keep returning, we also need to understand what keeps them going.
My psychotherapy training allows me to work with you at that deeper level, while helping you put what you learn into practice. My aim is for you to leave therapy with more than an understanding of your difficulties—with changes you can feel and sustain in everyday life.
My values
My values, by which I live and work, are:
Commitment: Once I’ve agreed to do something, I give it all I have, see it through and do it to the best of my ability.
Humour: I can see the funny side of life and believe humour can play an important role, especially in therapy.
Authenticity: I try always to be the most authentic version of myself, and encourage couples to create a relationship where they can also be their most authentic selves together.
Empathy: I don’t believe people should be judged for the ways they have learnt to cope with life. We do what we can with what we know and are able to do.
Kindness: It matters to me how I treat other people, and not just when it’s easy.
Patience: What we ask of ourselves isn’t always easy. I believe in giving people the time they need to master what they find difficult and supporting them when they struggle with their emotions.
After all these years
I’ve now worked with many hundreds of couples, but I haven’t lost the excitement I feel when I see two people experience the change they thought would never happen.
I also never forget the responsibility involved. When a couple sits in front of me and trusts me with something as important as their relationship, I take that trust very seriously.
Perhaps part of that comes from having once sat on the other side of the room myself.
What that time in my life was like stays with me.
