Psychotherapist & Supervisor — Essex, UK
I want to see behind
the curtain — and help
you do the same.
I have spent over twenty years sitting with people in some of the most difficult moments of their lives. What I’ve learned is that most suffering doesn’t come from circumstances alone. It comes from how we relate to those circumstances — the stories we tell, the feelings we avoid, and the ways we stop ourselves from seeing clearly.
Who I am
A therapist shaped by more than one world
I grew up in South Africa during the transition from apartheid to democracy — navigating a country rewriting its own rules. There was no clear path. The certainties the older generation had inherited no longer applied. You had to find your own way, or not find it at all. That experience of being between worlds, of having to build something from nothing, has never left me.
I moved to the UK in my twenties — arriving with a backpack and a first language that nobody here spoke. I know what it costs to start again in a country that isn’t yours: the invisible labour of belonging, the masking of difference, the paperwork and the loneliness and the quiet determination it takes to build a life. I didn’t arrive as an expert in transition. I arrived as someone going through one.
Learning about how things work, building things, and a childhood love of puzzles — and later, of fantasy novels, philosophy, and every question that conservative culture said I shouldn’t ask — shaped a mind that always wants to know what’s underneath. That curiosity has never really quietened.
“There is a story of a pool called Bethesda, where the water would be stirred — and those who could enter while it moved would be healed. Therapy, at its best, is something like that stirring: not a cure administered, but a moment of movement created together, in which something that has been still for a long time can finally shift.”
On the conditions for growth
How I work
Not directing growth — creating the conditions for it
I am drawn to what happens when the right conditions exist and something shifts on its own — the way complex systems self-organise, the way a family finds a new way of talking when the old patterns are gently interrupted. I don’t believe the therapist’s job is to fix people. It is to help create a space where something that has been stuck can move again.
At the same time, I have spent years working in high-intensity inpatient environments — adolescent psychiatric units, crisis settings — where reflection alone is not enough. Sometimes people need structure first. Something solid to stand on before they can look around. My work holds both of these truths: the importance of space and the importance of ground.
The whole, not just the parts
Individuals exist inside families, histories, and communities. I look at the invisible connections between people, not just the person in front of me.
The body, not just the story
Trauma lives below words. Some of the most important work happens when we stop trying to narrate and start paying attention to what the body already knows.
Clarity, not a better story
Our narratives give us meaning — but they can also blind us. The most powerful shift I have witnessed is when someone sees their situation clearly, without the distortion of old habits and fears.
Safety before insight
Real change requires a real sense of safety. I work to establish that first — without it, even the best technique produces nothing of lasting value.
A path, not a CV
How I learned to work the way I do
Systemic & Family Therapy — Learning to see the whole
My primary training — and still my deepest love. Systemic therapy taught me to look beyond the individual to the patterns between people: the feedback loops, the unspoken rules, the loyalties and ruptures that shape how a family moves. Gregory Bateson’s idea of introducing new information into a system — a well-placed question, a shared metaphor, a moment of reflection on the reflection — and watching something shift. I am also a qualified Systemic Supervisor, which means I spend time helping other therapists develop their own eyes for this.
DBT & Structural Work — Learning what space cannot do alone
Working intensively with young people in inpatient settings taught me that some people arrive too ungrounded, too dysregulated, too frightened for open-ended reflection. They need something to hold onto first. DBT gave me a rigorous language for emotional regulation and the body’s role in it. Sometimes the most therapeutic thing you can do is teach someone a concrete skill, offer a clear structure, or simply tell them what to do next.
EMDR — Learning where trauma really lives
Almost every young person I worked with inpatient had experienced significant trauma. Trauma is not a disorder — it is a survival response that has outlasted its usefulness. The alarm that saved you once is still ringing, years later, shaping everything you avoid and everything you fear. EMDR works below the narrative, in the body and the memory systems. Like systemic therapy, it doesn’t force healing — it creates conditions in which the mind can do what it already knows how to do: process, integrate, and move on.
EFT, FT for AN — Learning what connection really costs
We are wired to attach. Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples and families helped me understand how disruptions to attachment — the small ruptures and the large ones, the unspoken wounds, the patterns that repeat across generations — drive most of what people bring to therapy. My training in Family Therapy for Anorexia Nervosa deepened this further: eating disorders are rarely about food. They are about families trying to connect across a divide they can’t name.
Meditation & Contemplative Practice — Learning what no model can teach
I have a long-standing personal practice in Buddhist meditation, including extended silent retreats. What contemplative practice gave me that twenty years of clinical training hadn’t is the experience of stepping outside the story altogether. That gap between our concepts and reality is where most suffering lives. Practices like Mahamudra and Dzogchen train the capacity to rest in open, clear awareness — to see without the contractions of trauma, habit, or fear. This informs everything.
“I wanted to see behind the curtain — behind the curtain of concepts we mistake for reality. After twenty years, that is still the only thing I ask of myself, and the only thing I truly ask of the people I work with.”
The Cauldron of Real Life
Some people believe that real psychological or spiritual growth requires retreat from the world — a monastery, a mountain, a life of solitude. I think the opposite. Family life, in all its difficulty and tenderness, is the most relentless teacher I have ever had.
I am married with two children. I live in Essex. I meditate regularly and sometimes go on retreat — but I also do the school run, manage the difficult conversations at the dinner table, and lose my patience in ways I later regret and try to repair. I have had to learn, imperfectly and repeatedly, the same lessons I sit with clients around: how to regulate an emotion rather than act it out, how to accept what cannot be controlled, how to stay connected to the people I love when connection feels hard.
Nothing I offer comes from a position of having it worked out. It comes from being in the middle of it, the same as everyone else.
Currently
Senior Clinician & Team Lead, adolescent inpatient unit, NHS. I am not currently offering private therapy, but I am building towards it — and in the meantime, this site is a place to think, write, and connect.
Background
Born and raised in South Africa. Arrived in the UK in my twenties. Essex has been home for over two decades. First language: Afrikaans.
Outside the room
Buddhist meditation (Mahamudra, Dzogchen). Long retreats. A lifelong habit of reading too widely — philosophy, science, fantasy, theology — and asking questions that don’t have clean answers.
Come alongside
If something here resonates, I’d like to hear from you.
Areas of work
Who I work with
My experience spans young people, adults, couples, and families — across NHS settings and in private practice (when available). A few areas where my training runs particularly deep:
- Families & systemic work — Trained Systemic & Family Therapist and Supervisor
- Trauma (EMDR) — Extensive EMDR training with adults and children
- Adolescents & young people — 20+ years in CAMHS & inpatient settings
- Couples & attachment — Emotionally Focused Couple & Family Therapy
- Eating disorders — Family Therapy for Anorexia Nervosa
- Emotion regulation — DBT-trained; ACT and CBT-informed
- Contemplative & mindfulness-based — Long-standing personal practice in Buddhist meditation
- Immigration & cultural identity — Personal and clinical experience of cross-cultural transition
A note on psychedelic integration
For those who have had experiences they can’t yet make sense of
Traditionally, psychedelic or entheogenic experiences happened within communities — with ritual, preparation, and shared meaning-making to hold what arose. That context is largely gone. People now have powerful, disorienting, or transformative experiences in settings that offer little support for what comes after.
Integration work is the process of making meaning from those experiences — finding language for what emerged, understanding what shifted, and learning how to carry it into ordinary life. I have completed extensive training in Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy (ATMA CENA) and have a genuine interest in this area of work.
A note on legality: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is not currently legal in the UK. Integration work — supporting people who have already had these experiences — is. If you have had a psychedelic experience (whether in a clinical trial, abroad, or otherwise) and are looking for a therapist with the training and willingness to take it seriously, I would be glad to hear from you.
Come alongside
I am not currently taking private clients — but I am here, and this site is a living space for ideas about therapy, life, and what it means to see clearly. If something here resonates, or if you want to stay in touch as my practice develops, I’d like to hear from you.