Hello
I’m Helen. I’m a psychotherapist based in north London and online.
I’m here to help you when life gets tough. I support you to be yourself and to create a life that feels satisfying and real.
I specialise in working with people outdoors. I’m also neurodivergent and I work in a neurodivergence-affirming way.
I work with those who identify as neurodivergent and those who don’t.
Scroll down to find out about me and what I offer.
What I do
People come to see me for many different reasons. These can include:
Making sense of the discovery that you are autistic, ADHD or both/AuDHD
Anxiety and stress
Depression and low mood
Fear about climate and ecological crisis
Grief and loss
Chronic ill health, for example long covid
Issues with food and eating
Childhood trauma and abuse
Relationship difficulties
Struggles with identity and belonging
I offer weekly psychotherapy sessions online or outdoors. Sessions last 50 minutes.
Online sessions take place on Zoom, and I recommend that you find a comfortable, private place at home where you can talk. It’s fine to have the cameras off if you prefer.
Outdoor sessions can involve walking and talking, or finding somewhere to sit, or a mixture of both. Many people find it easier to talk when they are walking or sitting side by side, rather than face to face. Doing therapy outdoors isn’t always appropriate and doesn’t work for everyone, so I’ll discuss it with you before we go ahead.
I’ve been working as a psychotherapist for ten years. Quite early on, I did a training in wild therapy, because I wanted to get out of the consulting room and do therapy in a way that felt more connected to nature.
More recently, I discovered that I’m neurodivergent (autistic and self-identified ADHD). This has enabled me to make sense of things that I never understood about myself and that traditional therapy approaches hadn’t managed to grasp.
My work now combines the insights and benefits of psychotherapy with my skills as a wild therapist and my awareness and knowledge of neurodivergence.
I’m committed to providing psychotherapy that is as supportive of neurodivergent minds and lives as it is of everybody else.
About me
My qualifications and accreditations:
Masters’ Degree in Integrative Psychotherapy from the Minster Centre in London, accredited by the University of Middlesex.
Diploma in Wild Therapy from the Embodied Relational Therapy (ERT) school.
Post-Graduate Diploma in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy from the Minster Centre.
Registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).
About psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is about bringing awareness and understanding to how you are thinking, feeling and behaving. We’ve all developed habits of behaviour and patterns of relating that don’t serve us well. The more curiosity we can bring to these patterns and habits, the less power they have, and the more possible it is for something new to emerge.
Your thoughts, feelings and behaviour can be shaped by many different things, including trauma, childhood experiences, relationships, and, if you’re neurodivergent, trying to navigate life in a world that isn’t designed for you.
Therapy is a place for you to bring all of you, even the bits you don’t think anyone else wants to see. It’s a unique kind of relationship, which can feel challenging, validating and illuminating. Together we get to know who you really are, and I support you to make the changes that will create the life you actually want.
Wild therapy
Wild therapy is a kind of ecotherapy, which basically means therapy that involves nature in some way. Study after study shows that ‘being in nature’ is good for you - mentally and physically. But wild therapy isn’t simply about doing therapy outside, or walking and talking – although it can, and often does, include both of those things.
Nick Totton, who developed wild therapy, says that it is ‘a state of mind, not a bag of tricks’. This is because wild therapy invites us to broaden our perspective on what it means to be human – to include our relationships with the land, with other species, with the ecosystems that we are part of.
Wild therapy also encourages us to embrace our own innate wildness – the idea that we are human animals, with sensitive nervous systems, instincts, intuition and dreams, as well as intellectual minds. When we do this, we often find that we start to relax and trust ourselves more, and to sense that we’re part of something much bigger than ourselves.
Fees
My fee is £120 per session.
I keep some low-cost places for those on a lower income. These spaces are currently full.
Location
Outdoor sessions take place on Hampstead Heath and in the green spaces around Barnet, on the north edge of the city.
I will arrange a meeting place with you that is convenient for both of us.