What Therapy Looks Like With Me
Why I work the way I do — and what you can expect when we work together

My approach to therapy didn’t come out of a textbook — it came from a long road of lived experience, clinical curiosity, and frustration.

Like many people, I’ve been on the receiving end of therapy that felt like a bandaid - surface-level strategies, advice that didn’t land, and models that pathologised normal human responses to pain. I got tired of seeing therapy models that focused on managing symptoms without ever asking why those symptoms were there in the first place. I’ve spent years searching for something that actually creates deep, lasting change. I wanted more than just a band-aid, and I knew my clients did too.

As both a neurodivergent human and a psychologist who works with many neurodivergent clients, I also grew increasingly frustrated with how ill-suited many traditional therapies are for autistic and ADHD brains. Telling someone to “just think differently” or “build better routines” without understanding how their brain processes the world isn’t just ineffective, it’s invalidating. You can’t override a nervous system with logic. And you can’t shame someone into healing.

So I built something different; an integrative approach to healing and growth.

What I found (and now use every day) is a therapeutic approach grounded in neuroscience, trauma-informed practice, and deep respect for each person’s inner world. This isn’t quick-fix therapy. It’s not about forcing change or managing symptoms. It’s about understanding why things make emotional sense in the first place and then gently updating what no longer serves you.

Coherence Therapy: The Neuroscience of Emotional Change
At the core of how I work is Coherence Therapy, grounded in the neuroscience of memory reconsolidation, the brain’s natural process for rewriting emotional learnings that drive symptoms. This is not just symptom management, it’s transformation.

Every symptom (like anxiety, perfectionism, shutdown, people-pleasing, or rage) makes emotional sense when we uncover what it's protecting. For example, chronic overworking might be driven by a deep belief that “If I stop, I’ll be worthless.” That belief may not be conscious but your nervous system lives by it. When we uncover these emotional truths and bring them into awareness in just the right way, the brain can literally rewrite them. That’s memory reconsolidation and it’s how real, lasting change becomes possible.

But to reach these emotional learnings, we need to know how to find them. That’s where two powerful models come in.

Internal Family Systems (IFS): Healing From the Inside Out
IFS offers a way to map your internal world; all the “parts” of you that carry pain, protect you from further hurt, or push you to function no matter the cost.

You might recognise parts like the inner critic, the anxious planner, the people-pleaser, the rage-filled teen, or the exhausted shutdowner. These aren’t signs of dysfunction, they’re survival strategies. In IFS, we learn to meet each part with curiosity, not judgement.

But IFS isn’t just about understanding your parts, it’s also about going back to the moments they formed, healing what they’ve been carrying, and helping them trust that they no longer need to protect you in the same way. We retrieve the exiled parts, relieve the burdened protectors, and re-establish your “Self”, the calm, compassionate centre of who you are that’s been there all along, but buried underneath it all.

Schema Therapy: Understanding the Blueprint
If IFS is the map of your parts, Schema Therapy is the blueprint of the beliefs that shaped them. It helps us understand the unmet needs and painful experiences that created the emotional patterns you're stuck in now.

Schemas are the lenses through which we see the world. They are deep-rooted, subconscious beliefs like “I’m not good enough,” “My needs are too much,” or “I have to earn love by being useful.” These beliefs often form early in life in a specific context, but our brains have generalised these learnings to all situations, and we continue to live by them long after they’ve stopped serving us.

In our work together, we uncover where those beliefs came from, how they’ve shaped your behaviour and relationships, and how to begin meeting the needs that were never met.

How It All Comes Together
I use IFS and Schema Therapy as clinical models to explore your emotional landscape and creating restorative experiences using the principles of Coherence Therapy (the neuroscience-based framework that outlines the steps necessary to make true transformation via memory reconsolidation).

In short: Coherence therapy gives us the roadmap, and IFS and Schema are the various vehicles we can use to take the journey. Destination: long-term restoration and healing.

This approach isn’t about “fixing” you. It’s about understanding what’s underneath your patterns, and helping your brain and body unlearn what it no longer needs to carry. It’s about uncovering what’s been in the way of your clarity, confidence, connection, and calm. Together, we go deep, but we go gently. You set the pace. You don’t have to come in knowing what’s wrong or what you want. We figure it out together.

This work is honest, real, and at times, confronting, but it’s also liberating. And if you’ve been stuck in cycles for years, or told to “just think differently,” this might be the first time you feel like someone finally gets it.

Curious about working together?
If you're ready to stop white-knuckling it through life and start doing the kind of work that leads to real change, I’m here. And your parts are welcome, too.