I am an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist in North East London based in Walthamstow, East London whose aim is to build trust, restore hope and promote growth within a secure therapy relationship. I began my training in 2005 at Birkbeck University in Central London, with a one-year ‘Introduction to Psychodynamic Counselling and Therapy’ for which I gained a Distinction. I then trained at The Bowlby Centre in North East London on a four-year training between 2006 and 2010 to become an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist in North East London. Between 2010 and 2014 I spent four years as a teacher on the Clinical training and two years developing their teaching curricula. I am currently teaching the Clinical Seminar and I am also currently a certified Training Therapist on the Bowlby Centre Psychotherapy training. I also supervise those clinicians who are interested in working within an attachment- based framework.
Before I became a psychotherapist in North East London I worked for 12 years in corporate FMCG sectors and public health as a market research and consumer insight specialist. I applied psychological insight to commercial and retail strategies across the food and drink and supermarket retail industries as well as NHS Public Health campaigns. I therefore have first-hand insight into the trials and tribulations of office life and it is a personal interest of mine to understand attachment and group dynamics in organisations and their effect on mental health and effectiveness at work.
There are two main ways you can work with me. While my overall aim is to help people feel more content and in control of their lives, sometimes people just want a short chunk of therapy to explore and sort out a specific issue that is pressing them. I therefore offer short-term therapy for this very purpose involving 10-12 weekly sessions where we identify the specific issues up front, set therapeutic goals and establish the expectations of what can be achieved in this time frame.
More often though, people tend to approach me with a more general sense of malaise where something is just not working out for them and they don’t know where to begin. Or people often have a specific problem but it is more complex, long-term and deep-seated and unlikely to be resolved in a few sessions. For this I offer a longer-term open-ended approach which might involve attending once, twice (optimal) or even three times a week. This is to establish a trusting alliance where we can meet difficult feelings within a robust, consistent, predictable safe space. I hate to say it but meaningful therapeutic change can be long, painful hard work which requires perseverance and building trust between therapist and client. I always urge people to be patient with themselves as they navigate their difficult feelings in the therapy. As I say to many people, if you have been saddled with this problem for twenty-thirty odd years, it’s unlikely to be repaired in a few weeks or months.