People ask me this a lot, and I've noticed the honest answer isn't, "I'm a Person-Centred psychotherapist."
That tells you the label, not what actually happens when you sit down in my room in Clapham on a Tuesday.
So here's the practical version.
Will you talk, or just sit there?
I'll talk. I'm naturally a quiet person, so I'm not going to fill the hour with the sound of my own voice, but I won't sit nodding meaningfully until your time is up either.
I talk most in a first session, because I want to understand your situation and what you're hoping for. After that I'm mostly listening and following where you go. I'll ask questions when I want to be sure I've understood you properly, and I'll challenge things when it's needed. Being listened to carefully is not the same as being left alone.
Will you tell me what to do?
Mostly, no.
Plenty of people in your life are already telling you what to do. What's harder to find is somewhere to work out what you actually want.
That said, I'm not a blank wall. Sometimes I'll share something — a piece of research, a podcast, an article — if I think it might help you look at your situation differently. And if I think something serious is happening in your life, I'll say so. I'll pick my moment, because naming something before a relationship is strong enough to hold it tends to send people running. But I won't sit on it indefinitely either.
Do I need to know what I want to work on before I arrive?
No. And even if you do know, it'll probably change.
Some people arrive with a clear focus and keep it. Others arrive with a vague sense that something isn't right and we find the shape of it together. Both are fine.
It also works in both directions. You might have worked with a more directive therapist and find the spaciousness here a relief. Or you might start with me, get to the end of what you can say, and realise you now want something more structured. That's not a failure of the work — that's you knowing what you need, which is rather the point.
What if I don't know what to say?
I won't leave you stranded in silence. I'm especially not going to do that if you're neurodivergent and the silence is doing something unhelpful to you.
If we get stuck, I'll ask a question to get things moving. I've played getting-to-know-you games with clients to build the relationship. I've meditated with clients because that's what the silence needed. I'm flexible and I'm creative, and I don't have a protocol I'm quietly steering you through.
My personality is my technique. So there's no fixed limit on what we do or what we talk about.
How long does this go on for?
As long as you want it to.
Some people come for six sessions, know exactly what they want to look at, and we're done. Some stay for years. Some do six sessions, sort the thing they came for, and then notice there's a whole other set of things they'd like to talk about.
There's no set number, no package, and no structure you have to complete.
Not straight away.
We start weekly, and that's not negotiable at the beginning. It takes time for the relationship to feel properly established — for you to actually feel my empathy and non-judgement, not just know intellectually that you're paying someone whose job is to be that way. That's not something either of us can rush, and it's different for everyone. We'll know together when we're there.
Once we're there, fortnightly can work well — particularly for the slower, more existential work. Breaking a pattern you've been living inside for years takes practice, and a lot of that practice happens between sessions: sitting with something difficult, watching it pass, noticing the pattern show up again in real time. Then bringing that back into the room. Fortnightly gives that practice more room to happen. It's less suited to a specific, nameable problem you want solved and gone — that's often better served by shorter, more frequent work.
If fortnightly feels right once we're established, we can try it. And I'll tell you honestly if I think the gap's working against you.
Can we meet fortnightly?
How does it end?
When you want to finish, I ask for a month's notice. It's in the contract, but I don't hold it religiously — it's a suggestion, not a rule, and I've had people tell me at the end of a session that it was our last one.
What the month is for is having the ending itself. Space to talk about what life after therapy might look like, what happens if you change your mind, and whatever else you want to bring. You use those sessions however you want — I'm not going to hand you a closing-down programme. But it helps to have some structure to work with, or against.
And it isn't only you ending something. It's us ending a relationship, and I feel that too. I'm changed by the people I work with — clients have taught me things, sent me music and books, shown me corners of the world I wouldn't otherwise have seen. Saying goodbye is genuinely sad for me.
Why I work this way
Person-Centred therapy rests on a simple idea: given the right conditions, people move towards what's good for them. Not because someone tells them to, but because the capacity was already there and needed somewhere to surface.
That word power gets a bad name, but at root it just means being able — to act, to choose, to look after yourself, to change something. Most people arrive having lost some of that, or having handed it over. My job isn't to hand it back, because it was never mine. It's to create the conditions where you can pick it up again — and use it in a life you share with other people, not at their expense.
Practical bits
Sessions are 50 minutes, in person at Clapham North or online, and the first one is free — a chance to see whether we click, with no obligation to carry on.
Fees, insurance, cancellation and location details are all on the Therapy page.
If any of this sounds like what you're after, get in touch.