Individual Therapy
Individual Therapy in Croydon
When you're tired of holding it together
A space that's yours
Fifty minutes a week where you don't have to manage anyone else's feelings.
No performing. No editing yourself to make it easier to hear. No wondering if you're being too much or taking up too much space.
Most people who come to therapy have spent years being the capable one, the listener, the one who holds it together. The idea of having someone focus entirely on you can feel almost uncomfortable at first.
What we actually do
We talk. Not small talk, not catching up - we go towards the things you usually step around. The stuff that's hard to say out loud. The thoughts you've never told anyone.
I'll notice things - patterns in what you're saying, feelings that flash across your face, the way certain topics make you speed up or shut down. Sometimes I'll point them out. Sometimes I'll sit with you in the silence.
We pay attention to what happens between us, because it usually echoes what happens in your other relationships. If you find yourself trying to please me, or worrying I'm bored, or holding back because you don't want to seem difficult - that's not a problem, it's material.
Over time, you start to see yourself more clearly. Not just what you do, but why. Not just the pattern, but where it came from and what it's protecting you from. This is psychodynamic therapy.
What changes
It's gradual. You won't wake up different one morning. But you'll start catching yourself mid-pattern - "oh, I'm doing that thing again." Conversations will go differently. Reactions that used to be automatic will have a pause in them.
You might find yourself less afraid of conflict. Or able to feel sad without immediately needing to fix it. The internal narrator that used to run commentary on everything - judging, correcting, second-guessing - gets quieter. Not because you've silenced it, but because you no longer need it the way you once did.
People often describe a kind of aliveness that returns. Not happiness exactly - something less polished than that. More like the difference between watching your life and being in it. Decisions start coming from somewhere instinctive rather than anxious. Relationships feel different without you having to force them to.
The goal isn't to become someone else. It's to become more yourself - the version that isn't constantly managing, defending, or performing.
And this doesn't depend on being in therapy forever. The changes are in how you understand yourself, not in techniques that need maintaining. They keep developing long after the work ends.
Who comes to see me
People in their twenties, thirties and forties, mostly. Professionals who've achieved things but feel hollow. People who've done other therapy and want to go deeper. People who've never spoken to anyone about what's actually going on.
Often they're dealing with depression that doesn't lift, anxiety that won't settle, relationships that keep going wrong in familiar ways. Sometimes there's a specific trigger - a breakup, a loss, a crisis at work. Sometimes it's more diffuse - just a growing sense that something needs to change.
What they have in common is that they're ready to look honestly at themselves. Not everyone is, and not everyone needs to be. But this work requires a willingness to see what you've been avoiding.
Related reading
Therapy Isn't About Fixing You. It's About Understanding You
You've been trying to fix yourself for years. Maybe decades. You've read the books, tried the apps, implemented the morning routines. And you're exhausted.
I Don't Know What I Feel
Someone asks how you feel about something that just happened — a breakup, a job loss, your father's cancer diagnosis — and you go blank.