About my approach

Person-centred & relational

Person-Centred Therapy, initially developed by psychologist Carl Rogers, represents a shift away from the idea of the therapist as an expert authority who diagnoses and directs the client toward change. Rogers believed deeply in the inherent worth and capacity of every human being, proposing that people possess within themselves a natural drive toward growth, healing, and self-actualisation. This approach holds that psychological distress often arises when a person's sense of self becomes distorted by the conditional approval of others, leading them to suppress their true feelings and needs to feel accepted and loved. Person-Centred Therapy, therefore, is not about fixing or correcting the client, but about creating the right conditions - by offering consistent and genuine warmth, understanding, and presence, hidden or denied parts of ourselves can be brought back into awareness and integrated. This collaborative process facilitates insight, clarity, and therefore change.

Trauma-sensitive & embodied 

Trauma lives in the present as much as the past - in how we move through the world, how safety is sensed, how possible or threatening relationships feel. Processing trauma requires a safe and consistent relational experience to be integrated. As hardship and pain often disconnect us from our bodies, I pay close attention to your body responses and what can be safely attended to in any given moment. Ultimately, therapy doesn't require reliving painful memories, but rather processing their aftermath and by doing so, restoring our capacity to feel, to be present, and to trust our own experience again.

Non-pathologising & difference-affirming

I believe that individuals cannot be separated from the wider sociopolitical contexts, and there should be space in therapy for exploring how they affect us. I am mindful of how often responsibility for one's wellbeing is placed entirely on the individual without acknowledging systemic factors, and the fact that some of our distress is a perfectly healthy response to harmful circumstances. I work from the belief that much of what gets labelled as dysfunction is a response to difficult or harmful circumstances, and that the problem often lies in the conditions, rather than in the person. 

Working from an anti-oppressive perspective aims to embrace the complexity of human experience beyond labels or diagnoses, and to question the motivation to "fix" ourselves to fit into harmful systems. Instead, it attempts to aid the process of freeing ourselves from internal and external impositions, often embracing experiences and identities that are outside of dominant norms.