Getting Started

I offer a free 15 minute telephone consultation whereby you can let me know what you would like help with and I can let you know if I feel I can help you. This will give you an opportunity to ask me any questions you may have or worries about starting therapy.

It’s important that there’s a good fit between what you need and what I can offer. If I don’t feel there’s a good fit, I will try to suggest other places or a different therapist whom I feel would be a better fit for you.

If after your initial consultation, we both feel that there is a good fit, we will arrange to meet for a psychological assessment. This usually takes place over two fifty minute sessions.

During your psychological assessment appointments, I will ask you more about what brings you to therapy and what you would like help with. The term ‘assessment’ can evoke anxiety for some people but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not a test that can be passed or failed; it’s an opportunity for me to learn more about you and how I can help you.  Before you attend your assessment appointments, I will ask you to complete and send through an assessment questionnaire. 

A psychological formulation is a way of making sense of your difficulties; how the problem arose, links to past event(s), recent triggers, what the difficulties look like today in terms of your mood, behaviour and physiology and what might be keeping the problem going.    A psychological formulation can be incredibly powerful because it helps you to make sense of your distress and demystifies the problem for you.  It also enables you to see how psychological therapy can help you to move forward.

We will collaboratively decide on the goals we will focus on and an individual, tailored treatment plan will be created for you.  We will regularly review your progress throughout treatment to make sure we’re staying on track to reach your goals.  It’s not always apparent how many sessions will be needed and so I tend to work in tranches of six whereby we review your progress after every block of six sessions.  I offer both short-and long-term psychological treatment.  Towards the end of treatment, we will jointly put together an individualised staying well plan that is designed to keep you well after therapy sessions end.