Patients come with a wide range of difficulties and circumstances, including:

• Trauma and complex trauma

• Anxiety, panic and depression

• Difficult or recurring relationship patterns

• Attachment and intimacy difficulties

• Emotional difficulties and problems with self-regulation

• Longstanding patterns of behaviour or thinking

• Identity, self-esteem and authenticity

• Loss, bereavement and significant life changes

• Difficulties arising from childhood experiences

• Stress, overwhelm and persistent inner conflict

• Feeling that something is wrong without being sure what it is

• Questions about meaning, values, purpose and direction

Some people come to my practice because they are struggling with a specific problem. Others have tried therapy before, have received a diagnosis, or function well outwardly but continue to experience difficulties that have not been resolved.

You do not need to arrive with a clear diagnosis or know exactly what kind of therapy you need.

My practice is rooted in Integrative Psychotherapy and Existential Analysis.

I do not use a predetermined technique simply because a particular symptom or diagnosis is present. Similar difficulties can have very different causes, and effective therapy depends on understanding the individual rather than treating a category.

Where appropriate, we may explore:

• your personal history and significant experiences;

• relationships and attachment;

• emotions, bodily experience and habitual patterns;

• beliefs, assumptions and ways of understanding yourself;

• the circumstances and relationships in which you are living;

• values, meaning, purpose and identity; and

• the wider social, cultural and spiritual dimensions of your life.

The aim is not simply to reduce symptoms, but to understand what may be keeping difficulties maintained and, where possible, to address them more deeply.

Not everyone needs the same kind of psychotherapy, or the same degree of depth.

Counselling may be appropriate when you need space to understand a current difficulty, make sense of an experience, consider your options or regain a clearer sense of direction.

Focused, shorter-term work may be appropriate when you are dealing with a particular problem or seeking a specific change.

Trauma-focused work may involve understanding and regulating the effects of traumatic experiences and, where appropriate, working more directly with traumatic memories and their continuing impact.

Longer-term psychotherapy may be appropriate when difficulties are longstanding, interconnected, or rooted in patterns that have developed over many years. This can involve deeper exploration of relationships, identity, emotional patterns, assumptions and behaviour.

Existential Analysis takes a broader view of psychological difficulty. Alongside personal history and relationships, it considers questions of freedom, responsibility, values, meaning, mortality, belonging and how you are choosing to live.

These forms of work are not mutually exclusive. The appropriate approach depends on what we discover together.

Online psychotherapy is not a reduced version of in-person therapy.

The same therapeutic relationship, assessment and depth of psychotherapeutic work can take place online, provided that the patient’s environment is appropriate and the practical and professional requirements can be met.

I work online with English-speaking patients in the UK and internationally. This can be particularly useful for people who live outside of Glasgow, who travel regularly, have moved countries, or simply prefer the privacy and continuity of working from their own environment.

For longer-term psychotherapy, continuity is often more important than physical location. Online work can allow that continuity to be maintained when circumstances, geography or travel would otherwise make regular attendance difficult.

The important question is not whether therapy takes place online or in person, but whether the patient’s setting allows us to work properly together.

Assessment gives us an opportunity to understand your difficulties in context and in detail before deciding what kind of work, if any, is appropriate for you.

Sometimes the most useful approach will be targeted therapeutic work. Sometimes it will involve more exploratory psychotherapy. Sometimes another form of help may be more appropriate.

The aim is to make that judgement carefully rather than simply fitting you into a predetermined treatment plan by virtue of a symptom or diagnostic label.

Existential psychotherapy is concerned not only with how we adapt to our circumstances, but also with whether the life we are living is genuinely our own.

This can involve exploring what genuinely matters to you, distinguishing this from what you may have absorbed from other people, relationships, culture and social expectations, and developing greater awareness of your choices and values.

This does not mean rejecting the world around us. We are shaped by relationships, culture and society. Rather, it means developing a more conscious relationship with the world while becoming more fully ourselves.

Existential work may also involve questions of meaning, purpose, mortality, belonging, freedom, responsibility and spirituality.

Where appropriate, additional support may include meditation, yoga and other experiential practices.

These are not substitutes for psychotherapy. They may sometimes be useful alongside psychological work, depending on your circumstances and what we are trying to achieve.

Current patients may also have access to my private Resources library, containing extensive written material that can support longer-term therapeutic work.

You do not need to decide in advance which service or therapeutic approach you need.

The purpose of the initial meeting and assessment is to understand your situation well enough to make a responsible judgement about what help may be useful.

If you are unsure whether this practice is appropriate for you, the GUIDE page may be useful before booking an Introductory Meeting.