What Therapy Looks Like With Me: Why I work the way I do, and what to expect when we work together

My approach didn't come from a textbook. It came from lived experience, clinical curiosity, and frustration.

Like many people, I've had therapy that felt like a band-aid: surface strategies, advice that didn't land, and models that pathologised normal responses to pain. I got tired of managing symptoms without ever asking why they were there. As a neurodivergent psychologist who works with many neurodivergent clients, I also saw how poorly traditional therapies fit autistic and ADHD brains. Telling someone to "just think differently" without understanding how their brain works 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 grounded in neuroscience, trauma-informed practice, and deep respect for your inner world. Not quick fixes, and not symptom management. We work out why things make emotional sense, then gently update what no longer serves you.

The neuroscience: memory reconsolidation

Every symptom, whether anxiety, perfectionism, shutdown, people-pleasing, or rage, makes emotional sense once we uncover what it's protecting. Chronic overworking, for example, might be driven by an unconscious belief that "if I stop, I'll be worthless." Your nervous system lives by it, even if you've never put it into words. When we bring these emotional truths into awareness in just the right way, the brain can literally rewrite them. That process is called memory reconsolidation, and it's how real, lasting change happens.

To get there, I draw on three models.

Coherence Therapy shows us how to surface those hidden emotional truths and update them, following the exact steps memory reconsolidation requires.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) maps the "parts" of you that carry pain or work hard to protect you: the inner critic, the anxious planner, the people-pleaser, the exhausted shutdowner. These aren't dysfunction, they're survival strategies. We meet each one with curiosity, heal what it carries, and reconnect you with your calm, compassionate "Self".

Schema Therapy traces the deep beliefs beneath those parts, like "I'm not good enough" or "I have to earn love by being useful". These form early, then generalise to everything, and we keep living by them long after they've stopped serving us. Together we find where they came from and start meeting the needs that were never met.

How it fits together

Memory reconsolidation is the roadmap. Coherence Therapy, IFS, and Schema are the vehicles. The destination is long-term healing.

This isn't about "fixing" you. It's about understanding what sits underneath your patterns and helping your brain and body unlearn what they no longer need to carry, so your clarity, confidence, connection, and calm can come through. We go deep, but gently, at your pace. You don't have to arrive knowing what's wrong. We work it out together.

The work is honest, real, and at times confronting, but it's also liberating. If you've been stuck in the same 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 your way through life and do the kind of work that leads to real change, I'm here. And your parts are welcome too.