About Luke

The plan was never to become a therapist. Like most plans made in your early twenties, mine got spectacularly derailed.

I spent years performing a version of myself that felt safe but hollow. I was brilliant at it - being exactly what people expected, managing everyone else’s comfort, keeping anything real carefully hidden.

Until I couldn’t anymore.

What followed was a proper collapse. The kind where your parents have to collect you from another country because you’ve completely lost the plot. The kind where everything you thought you knew about yourself gets stripped away and you’re left with nothing but the truth you’ve been avoiding.

I’d built my entire identity on being the capable one, the one who had it together, the one who helped others with their problems. Turns out that was just sophisticated avoidance. When it all fell apart, I discovered I didn’t actually know who I was underneath all that performance.

Coming back from that taught me what it really means to rebuild yourself from scratch. Not the inspirational version - the messy, humiliating, sometimes boring reality of learning to exist without the armour.

Why I do this work

That experience is what brought me to therapy - first as a client, then as a therapist. Not because I had some calling to help people, but because I understood something about what it feels like when your carefully constructed life stops working.

I chose psychodynamic work because it doesn’t try to make you feel better immediately. It’s interested in the truth - the patterns, the defences, the unconscious ways we’ve learned to survive that now keep us stuck. It’s the approach that finally helped me understand not just what I was doing, but why I couldn’t stop doing it.

I’ve been practising for over a decade now, and I’m still fascinated by the courage it takes to look honestly at yourself. To feel things you’ve been avoiding. To risk disappointing people by being real instead of agreeable.

How I work

I trained in psychodynamic therapy and I’m registered with the BACP. I maintain regular supervision because this work requires accountability, not just good intentions. I’m currently training in couples therapy at Tavistock Relationships, learning how unconscious patterns play out between two people.

I am in my own therapy because I believe you can’t ask someone to do work you’re not willing to do yourself. The personal work keeps me honest about my own blind spots and defences - the things that could otherwise get in the way of seeing you clearly.

I work with adults both online and from my practice in Croydon. I keep my caseload small enough to give each person the attention this work deserves.

If you’re wondering whether I’ll understand your particular brand of stuckness - I probably will. Not because I’ve studied it, but because I’ve lived some version of it. The performance, the exhaustion, the gap between who you are and who you pretend to be. I know what it costs.