Wanting and not wanting to feel better
The tensions and challenges presented by modern living, are well understood. How as individuals we face them, varies enormously. Sometimes we struggle to cope, and this is where speaking to someone can help.
We tend to think of counselling & psychotherapy as something we do because something has gone wrong. But perhaps what brings us is also something has gone missing: a possibility, a curiosity, a way of living we have somehow forgotten. We want to change, though we are rarely quite sure what we want to change into. We may want to feel better, while also being curious about what our unhappiness might be telling us.
Therapy creates a space in which these contradictions need not be hurried away. It allows us to become interested in ourselves—and perhaps, unexpectedly, less certain about who we thought we were.
A psychodynamic orientation
When we feel emotional, thinking clearly can become a struggle. Consequently many people arrive in therapy grappling with symptoms and having made bold attempts to think differently - others arrive in crisis.
Often these states-of-mind are expressed through anxiety, depression, addictive or obsessive patterns, feelings of emptiness or disconnection, sexual or bodily feelings, or the complex emotional demands of bereavement, grief, and mourning.
There are many therapies on offer, however most (not all) work not because of their particular orientation but because they require us to find someone we click with - whom we can trust. Someone, in whose company, we can find the safety and introspection to think about our lives.
Psychodynamic therapy differs not because it provides something new in this regard, but for its focus on depth, repair and renewal. The project is to notice and orientate ourselves towards not only reducing symptoms, but to meaningfully attend to the entangled patterns behind them - in rediscovering the way we relate to ourselves and to those we hold dear.
What I can help with
I work with people from all walks of life who are struggling with emotional difficulties. You may be suffering feelings of despair or panic from a break up? A disappointment in your career? You may have complex troubles with food, drink or drugs? Perhaps you're feeling dissatisfaction or frustrations in your relationship or sex life?
There may be deeper problems you wish to explore such as issues of confidence, identity or a painful sense that life has lost it's meaning in some way? Together we will consider what you decide to speak about; early relational experiences; self-criticism and internal conflicts; attachment dynamics and your unconscious experience - all in the service of understanding you more fully.
As a clinician I am often approached by people from creative and intellectually demanding professions—including academia, finance, the arts, television, and sport—as well as by parents seeking support for teenage children who are struggling with friendships, school, identity and the challenges of growing up.
Individual psychotherapy
I offer individual psychotherapy as a space to think carefully about the emotional life beneath our conscious understanding of ourselves.
Psychotherapy offers a space in which we can come to know ourselves more deeply - to recognise the emotional forces that shape our lives, to discover what has remained difficult to consider or feel, and find greater freedom in how we live and relate to others. Lasting change is not something imposed upon us, but something we come to create for ourselves.
Fees for individual in-person 50 minute sessions, begin at £90.
Couples work
I see couples therapy as a collaboration in which we come to know ourselves through each other. Beneath what is spoken, patterns of belonging, desire and inimacy begin to emerge—sometimes revealing parts of ourselves that are difficult to encounter.
In the shared experience of couples work, these patterns can be thought about and experienced differently, opening possibilities for greater freedom in how we relate, and choose to live together.
Fees for couples begin at £140, for in-person 1 hour 30 minute sessions.
Please do, get in touch
Thinking about speaking to someone can feel daunting. Finally making contact is usually a relief.
I am an experienced psychodynamic counsellor & psychotherapist accredited to the BACP. I've worked and volunteered in mental health services for over a decade. In crisis work, with the homeless - in various caring settings.
I enjoy working with adults, young people and couples, from comfortable offices in London Bridge & Stamford, Rutland.
Online therapy
I have also been working extensively online since 2020. The vast majority of people who come to me for help, appreciate how convenient online therapy is for them.
They don’t have to travel to someone’s office or house and can incorporate it into the working week, when an in-person session simply wouldn’t be feasible. The evidence suggests that working online makes no difference to whether you’ll find our work beneficial.
My room and technical set-up means that sessions are as close to an in-person experience as possible.
FAMILY ISSUES | ANXIETY | DEPRESSION | CONFIDENCE | OCD | CLINICAL DISORDERS | RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS | INTIMACY | LIVING WITH ADHD | TEEN PROBLEMS | GAD | SELF-ESTEEM | SEXUALITY | IDENTITY PROBLEMS
TYPES OF PROBLEMS
Research consistently demonstrates that psychotherapy can be highly effective with approximately 75% of people showing some improved emotional and psychological benefit (APA) . "A strong therapeutic relationship is often described as the "bedrock" of successful treatment." "2026 research results consistently indicate that online therapy is as effective as in-person therapy for treating common mental health conditions.
(Credit to Modern Wisdon and Jonathan Shedler)
If you are considering therapy, you are welcome to get in touch. Beginning therapy can feel significant - but it need not feel overwhelming. Book an Initial Consultation or Email: Dan@heathpractice.co.uk
Contact me
If you’re interested in psychodynamic psychotherapy or have questions, I offer a FREE 15-minute introductory telephone call.
Complete this form with a few details and I will get back to you within 48 hours.
Email: dan@heathpractice.co.uk
Phone: 07779 142 388
Next steps...
Before we meet for the first time I will send you a letter confirming the time, cost and some other details. It is important that you read this letter and my standard contract terms here.
I will be expecting to build a picture of your life which together we can work with. This session is a consultation. Subsequent sessions may also become consultations and this will depend on the nature of what you bring and how long I would expect the psychotherapy to take. If for instance your concern is of a 'complex' nature we may require several consultations before we can decide if working together will be helpful.
If you are happy for me to do so I will take some notes and develop a case formulation for the problems you'd like to work on. If this goes well, we can agree to meet again.
During these first few sessions we will begin to establish some goals and consider how long we think working on these goals might take us?
It may be that we choose to work on a specific concern and agree a contract term.
Or we might agree to see what develops over an undefined number of sessions (open-ended).
We will hopefully begin to develop a rapport (or what therapists refer to as a working alliance).
We can then reflect on how we work together independently, and as a pair.
I might remark on what you choose to talk about and how you understand me, in this conxtext. That is to say, I might notice what you bring to me specifically and make suggestions as to what this "way of being" with me, might be about?
Moving together through the process - week by week - initial anxieties about the therapy should hopefull begin to settle.
We can then begin to consider how life could be different and how this process of change might occur.