I'm particularly experienced in working with people of mixed and multi-racial heritage backgrounds, a group whose lived experience I personally feel isn't as understood as it should be.

Mixed-heritage families can hold the most beautiful blend of culture, stories, traditions and ways of expressing love. But they can also be complex and foster racial, cultural and even religious tensions and prejudice. For many mixed-heritage people, those tensions within mixed families don’t just go away over time, they might just look or sound different. That deserves compassion and understanding.

Please note; I don't exclusively work with people of mixed-heritage, I welcome people of all backgrounds and identities.

Down below, I've outlined a range of issues and experiences I work with.

• Damage caused from early-life experiences and formative relationships
• Struggles with identity, belonging or exclusion
• Difficulties in your relationships
• Worries about the future and what you want for yourself
• Feeling alone, isolated or disconnected
• Feeling low or depressed
• Strained relationship/s with family members
• Self-esteem, confidence and not feeling good enough
• Racial, cultural or religious difficulties
• Discrimination, racism and ableism
• Hair loss

This is not an exhaustive list. If you think we'd be a good fit, I'd gently encourage you to still reach out - so we can discuss what's happening for you and if we might work well together.

Early on, we can get to know each other a little bit. It's often at this stage that we might talk about what you might want from therapy and our time together. Collaboratively, we can then discuss how you're finding things along the way.

Examples could include:

• Understanding yourself more - like why you might be feeling a bit numb, low or anxious.
• Uncovering what might be behind the struggles in your various relationships.
• Processing the long-term impacts of damaging events or periods of time from your childhood.
• Just having a space to express yourself freely and fully, without judgement.
• Finding ways to cope with anxiety or stress - and the physical symptoms that come with it.
• Coming to terms with big changes, like a painful break up.
• Or maybe, there's something else you'd like to focus on - which I'd be more than happy to discuss with you in your free consultation.

We can also regularly review the the therapy, as we go - and make suitable adjustments along the way.

I'm an Integrative and relational Therapist which means I use a mix of therapeutic approaches to adapt your specific struggles or challenges. My two main therapeutic approaches are person-centred therapy and psychodynamic therapy.

Person-centred counselling is led by you - it's your space and you have full say on what to bring and when to bring it. It's centred around trust, support and openness between us - where you can talk freely about your honest thoughts, feelings, worries, emotions and beliefs. It aims to help you understand yourself more and gives you a space to express what's true for you.

Psychodynamic counselling: The root causes of our struggles are often hidden from our conscious (obvious) awareness - and many of the difficulties we face as adults will stem from difficult experiences from our childhood. Experiences that might be filled with things like neglect, constant stress or conflict at home, discrimination and more. This approach to therapy helps us to look at how the stuff from your past (that's probably hard to remember) might be driving the difficulties you're facing now. It's about helping you to understand yourself on a deeper level and finding long-lasting change.

Some benefits to these types of therapy

• You'll have full control of the pace and direction of the therapy - this is your space.
• You can understand yourself more and figure out why you feel the way you do.
• You can come to terms with difficult early-life experiences, that might be causing you issues now.
• You can get to know the core beliefs and emotions that are working behind the scenes - and causing you difficulty now.
• You can learn about your repeated patterns - and build new ones.
• You can find long-lasting change and personal growth. 

I’m able to work short-term (10-12 sessions) or long-term/open-ended. In my experience, difficulties with lots of history can take time to unpack and in these cases, longer-term/open-ended work will be more effective.

This is something we can discuss during your free consultation. It's also worth me saying that whether we work short-term or more open-ended will be your decision. I may offer a gentle recommendation, based on my experience, but it will always be your final choice.

• More able to balance our sessions with your work-life, family-life or other commitments.
• You can save time and money on car journeys, train journeys or bus rides.
• You can join from the comfort of your own home - which might be particularly helpful if you're needing to manage a disability or health-condition. 

However, there are a few important things to consider when thinking about having counselling sessions online:

• Are you comfortable using internet technology like Zoom?
• Do you have access to a space that you can use privately without interruption or being overheard?
• Do you feel safe in your own home or the location you'd be joining from?

I first had counselling as a young person in secondary school and then again in my adult life. Working with a counsellor gave me a consistent and safe space to put words to my feelings and emotions, and to make sense of what I was going through. 

Counselling also helped me to unpack how my early-life experiences were shaping my present. At that time in my life, I wanted to understand myself more;

• Why I felt a deep hunger for validation.
• Why certain situations made me feel like a powerless child.
• Why certain life changes worried me so much.
• Discuss my mixed-heritage, identity and search for belonging

With time and compassion, counselling helped me to start finding some answers to those questions, helping me form a different kind of relationship with myself - a more gentle and understanding one.

It's why I chose to become a counsellor myself; to offer others what was given to me.

• What we discuss during our sessions is confidential - it's rule number 1 in counselling.
• There is no right or wrong way for you to do counselling and you won’t be judged on how you’re performing.
• Counselling often involves talking about difficult topics. So, it’s very normal for things to feel a bit worse before they feel better.
• Counselling is not about quick fixes or expert advice. It involves helping you to understand yourself on a deeper level - so that you can find meaningful change and growth.