£70 per session for individuals, £100 for couples. The first session is paid upfront through the booking system, then I invoice monthly in arrears.
I know it's a lot. Therapy is expensive. But this is skilled work that takes years to learn to do properly, and what you're paying for is someone who won't flinch when you say the difficult things, won't tell you what to do, and won't tell anyone what you said.
Do you offer a free consultation call?
No. The first session is a full paid session.
That anxiety you're feeling about reaching out - that's not something to manage away before we start. It's part of what we need to work with. A consultation call smooths over the discomfort that's actually worth paying attention to.
There's also something I noticed when I used to offer them: they're marketing. On that call, we're both performing - I'm being reassuring, you're presenting the acceptable version of your problems. Neither of us is being real. The first session works better as the beginning of the work, not an audition.
You can read this website to get a sense of how I work. You can email me with practical questions - fees, availability, whether I work with specific issues. But if you want to know whether we can work together, book a first session. Come and find out.
How do I know if I need therapy?
Maybe you're googling therapists at 2am. Maybe you've told the same story to three different friends hoping one of them will make sense of it. Maybe you keep having the same argument with different people, or something that happened years ago still makes you leave the room.
If you're asking the question seriously enough to be reading this, there's probably something worth exploring. The clearer version of this question is often "how bad does it need to be before I'm allowed to get help?" And the answer is: you don't need permission. If something's not working, that's reason enough.
I've written more about this: Do I need therapy?
Can I do this online?
Yes. Same work, different medium. Some people prefer the distance a screen provides - it feels safer, less exposing. Some people need to be in the room where they can't just close the laptop when things get difficult. Both are valid. We can work out what feels right for you.
The therapy itself doesn't change. We're still doing the real work, just through pixels instead of air.
What if I've tried therapy before and it didn't work?
There are many reasons previous therapy might not have helped. Maybe it wasn't the right time. Maybe you weren't ready to stop performing the good client who makes appropriate progress. Maybe it was the wrong approach - if you tried CBT and it felt too surface-level, psychodynamic work might make more sense. Maybe the therapist couldn't hold what you needed to bring.
Not all therapy is the same. This isn't about positive thinking or coping strategies. It's about understanding what you're defending against and why. Sometimes people need to try therapy more than once before they find what actually helps.
The work itself
What therapy is actually like, from first session to last.
Will you give me advice?
No. If advice alone could fix this, you'd probably have fixed it already - you've had no shortage of people telling you what to do.
What we do instead: you talk, I listen - properly listen, not the polite nodding kind. I'll ask questions that might make you uncomfortable or point out patterns you haven't noticed. We're not solving problems or making action plans. We're working out why the same problems keep happening.
The question isn't what you need to do - you probably already know. The question is why you can't do it, or why the solutions that work for everyone else don't work for you. Your relationship difficulties might actually be about how you learned to attach in childhood. Your work stress might actually be about never feeling good enough.
The real work starts when you understand there's a difference between the problem everyone can see and what's actually driving it.
More detail: What happens in the first session?
What's your therapy approach?
I work psychodynamically, which means I'm interested in patterns - particularly how the ways you learned to survive in your family show up in your relationships now. How the strategies that kept you safe as a child might be the very things making you stuck as an adult.
We'll pay attention to what happens between us too, because that often mirrors what happens with other people in your life. If you're always apologising to me, you're probably apologising to everyone. If you can't disagree with me, you probably can't disagree with anyone. The room becomes a laboratory for understanding your relational patterns.
This isn't CBT. We're not doing worksheets or thought challenges or coping strategies. We're trying to understand the unconscious material that drives the patterns you can't seem to break, even when you know better.
More detail: What is psychodynamic therapy?
What if I don't know what to talk about?
That's fine. Start with what's happening now - the fight you had this morning, the email you can't answer, why you're nervous about being here. The important stuff always finds its way out eventually.
"I don't know what to say" is actually saying quite a lot. It might mean you're overwhelmed, or defended, or testing whether I'll fill the silence for you. Silence is part of the work, not a problem to solve. I won't rush to fill it, and over time you'll find it less uncomfortable than you expect.
Will therapy make me fall apart?
Possibly. Sometimes things get messier before they get clearer. You might feel worse before you feel different - not because therapy is harming you, but because you're finally feeling things you've been working hard not to feel.
I'm not going to promise you'll feel better immediately. That's what self-help books promise. But if quick reassurance were enough, you probably wouldn't be reading this.
But falling apart in a contained environment with someone trained to help you put the pieces back together differently? That's often exactly what needs to happen. The goal isn't to never fall apart. It's to learn you can survive it and come back changed.
Do I have to talk about my childhood?
Not in the cliché way you're imagining - lying on a couch blaming your mother for everything. But yes, we'll probably end up there eventually.
Not to blame your parents or to excuse your current behaviour, but to understand what you learned about survival. The rules that kept you safe at eight but are suffocating you now. How you adapted to the environment you had, and why those adaptations aren't serving you anymore.
Your childhood isn't an excuse, but it is an explanation. And understanding the origins of a pattern often makes it possible to change it.
What if I cry?
Then you cry. The tissues are there for a reason.
What's more interesting is if you never cry, even when talking about devastating things. Or if you cry but can't quite feel what's behind it - the tears come but something stays held back. Or if you apologise every time you have a feeling, like emotions are something you're doing to me. That tells us something worth exploring.
What if I want to leave?
If we're just starting and it feels wrong, we can stop. Not every therapeutic relationship works, and that's fine.
But if we've been working together for a while and you suddenly hate everything about it, that's usually worth exploring before we call it quits. The urge to run often happens right when we're getting close to something important. When therapy has stopped being comfortable and started being real.
There's a month's notice for established clients - partly practical (so you don't vanish and leave things unfinished), partly because the impulse to leave is often exactly what we need to understand together.
How long does therapy take?
Longer than you want, shorter than you've been struggling.
Some people need months, some need years. It depends on what you're working with and how deep it goes. Patterns that have been running since childhood don't shift in a few sessions.
You'll know it's working when you start noticing things differently - when you catch yourself mid-pattern and think "oh, I'm doing that thing again." When conversations go differently than they used to. When something that would have sent you into a spiral just feels manageable. It's gradual, not a lightning bolt. More like ice melting than glass breaking.
And you don't stay in therapy forever. You stay long enough for the understanding to take root. After that, the changes keep developing on their own - most people find they're still noticing shifts months and years after the work ends.
More detail: How long does therapy take?
What happens when therapy ends?
You don't go back to how you were. That's the fear, and it's understandable - especially if you've had the experience of finishing a course of CBT and watching the old patterns creep back.
Psychodynamic work produces a different kind of change. You're not maintaining techniques that stop working when you stop practising them. You've changed how you understand yourself, and that understanding doesn't expire.
Most people find the work keeps unfolding after it ends. You notice things you wouldn't have noticed before. Moments that would have caught you just don't anymore. Not because you're using a strategy, but because something has genuinely shifted underneath.
The ending itself is part of the work. We don't just stop - we talk about what it means to stop, what endings have meant for you before, what it's like to leave something that mattered. For some people, it's the first ending they've done properly.
Will I become dependent on therapy?
This is a fair question, and it deserves an honest answer.
Yes, to some extent. The work asks you to rely on someone, and if relying on people is exactly what's difficult for you, that's uncomfortable. It's meant to be. Not because dependency is the goal, but because learning to trust someone is often the thing that makes independence possible.
Most people who worry about becoming dependent have good reason to - they learned early that needing someone was dangerous, or that relying on others led to disappointment. That wariness isn't irrational. It's earned.
But there's a difference between dependency that keeps you stuck and dependency that helps you grow. The therapeutic relationship is temporary by design. You lean on it long enough to develop something you can carry with you. Then you leave, and you find you don't need it anymore - not because you've forced yourself to cope alone, but because something has genuinely changed in how you relate to yourself and others.
What if I'm not ready?
Nobody's truly ready. That's like waiting to feel confident before doing the thing that builds confidence.
You start where you are. Defended, uncertain, convinced you're different from everyone else who's ever needed help. That's not a problem. That's exactly where we begin.
When you're ready to take the step: email me at hello@talktoluke.com or use the booking system if you'd rather skip the back-and-forth. You don't need to explain your entire history or convince me you're worthy of help. Just say you'd like to talk about starting therapy. If it doesn't feel like the right fit, I'll try to point you toward someone who might be better.