Psychological difficulties

I offer structured, evidence-based therapy for adults experiencing emotional, relational, and psychological difficulties. This may include anxiety, low mood, stress, perfectionism, overthinking, low self-worth, emotional regulation difficulties, and relationship problems.
My approach is collaborative, thoughtful, and practical, helping you understand what is maintaining the difficulty and begin changing it with greater clarity and confidence.

Issues I Help Address

Anxiety

Anxiety can affect focus, decision-making, sleep, confidence, and your sense of control. In therapy, we work to understand the patterns maintaining anxiety and develop practical ways of responding that reduce avoidance, challenge unhelpful predictions, and increase your ability to tolerate uncertainty and anxiety without becoming controlled by it.

Low mood and depression

Low mood can leave you feeling disconnected, hopeless, slowed down, or cut off from things that once mattered. Therapy helps you understand the behavioural and thinking patterns that may be keeping depression in place and begin rebuilding motivation, connection, pleasure, and direction.

Chronic Stress & Burnout

Stress becomes problematic when it turns chronic or overwhelming. Burnout often follows - a state of emotional exhaustion, reduced productivity, and detachment that can erode both professional performance and personal satisfaction.
In therapy, we identify the demands, beliefs, behavioural patterns, and coping strategies that may be keeping the stress cycle going. The focus is on restoring sustainable functioning, improving boundaries and recovery, and changing patterns such as overwork, perfectionism, avoidance, or difficulty switching off.

Self-Confidence

I help individuals struggling with low self-confidence those who are self-critical, dismissive of their strengths or burdened by shame and frustration, often trapped in cycles of harsh self-judgment, minimising their achievements, and internalising negative beliefs. You might find it difficult to assert your needs, make decisions or resist people-pleasing. In therapy, we focus on identifying and challenging the negative core beliefs driving these thoughts, increasing awareness of your inner dialogue, and building behavioural skills that reinforce a more balanced, confident sense of self.

Low Self-Esteem & Self-Worth

Low self-esteem often stems from past experiences or negative self-beliefs. I help clients reframe limiting beliefs, cultivate self-compassion, and develop a positive self-concept that supports their goals and well-being.

Emotional Regulation

I help individuals identify and reshape unhelpful thought patterns, empowering them to regulate emotions more effectively and respond more constructively to life’s challenges. We explore the nature and function of emotions, including the concept of learned responses. Emotions are reframed as adaptive signals; information from the environment that guides and motivates behaviour. You develop greater awareness of your emotional responses and begin to see them not as flaws to suppress, but as patterns that can be understood and redirected toward healthier outcomes.

Perfectionism

I help individuals who judge their performance in rigid, all-or-nothing terms - those who spend excessive time striving for achievement at the expense of rest, relationships, or wellbeing. Many find themselves procrastinating work out of fear that it “won’t be perfect,” constantly comparing their success to others, or feeling crushed by relentless self-imposed expectations.

Overthinking

I help individuals stuck in cycles of replaying past conversations, obsessively analysing decisions, comparing themselves to others, catastrophising future outcomes, or spiralling into “what if” scenarios. These thinking habits can feel paralysing. Together, we identify and challenge cognitive distortions such as all-or-nothing thinking, improve decision-making, and practise strategies to reduce mental noise and enhance clarity.

Relational Issues

Relationships with partners, family, and friends can be complex. Whether you are dealing with conflict, emotional disconnection, communication problems, or difficulty setting boundaries, therapy can help you understand relational patterns more clearly and develop healthier ways of relating.

Manipulation, Control & Psychologically Harmful Relationships

I work with individuals affected by psychologically harmful relationship dynamics, including manipulation, gaslighting, coercive control, chronic invalidation, and patterns associated with highly antagonistic or narcissistic behaviour. These experiences can gradually undermine self-trust, boundaries, confidence, and your ability to judge what is happening in the relationship. Therapy focuses on understanding the pattern clearly, rebuilding trust in your own perceptions, strengthening boundaries, and recovering a more stable sense of self.

Self-Awareness & Personal Growth

Therapy can also be useful when there is no single diagnosis or crisis, but you notice recurring patterns in relationships, work, decision-making, or the way you respond to pressure. Psychological work can help you understand these patterns more clearly, examine where they come from, and decide which ones you want to change.

Psychosexual difficulties

Clinical sexology is a specialised, interdisciplinary field that explores the full spectrum of human sexuality - from needs and desire to sexual difficulties, from the mechanics of arousal to the emotional gravity of intimacy. It brings together psychological, relational, behavioural, and physiological perspectives to understand sexual functioning in context.

As a Clinical Sexologist and Psychologist, I assess not only the sexual difficulty itself, but the processes surrounding it: anxiety, attention, expectations, avoidance, relationship dynamics, sexual scripts, physical health, medication, and other factors that may be relevant. This allows treatment to be based on an individual formulation rather than a one-size-fits-all explanation.

Topics Commonly Addressed

Low or changed sexual desire

Changes in sexual desire can affect relationships, confidence, and the way you understand yourself sexually. Therapy explores the psychological, relational, behavioural, and where relevant physical factors associated with the change, including desire discrepancy between partners, avoidance, sexual expectations, and changes in the meaning or experience of sex.

Arousal difficulties

Difficulties with sexual arousal can occur even when sexual interest or attraction is present. Therapy explores factors such as anxiety, self-monitoring, attention, stimulation, sexual expectations, relationship context, and possible physical contributors that may be interfering with the arousal response.

Erectile Dysfunction

Difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection is a common concern that can impact self-confidence and intimacy. I provide evidence-based tools to manage performance anxiety, address psychological and physical factors, and restore confidence in your sexual life.

Orgasm & Ejaculatory Difficulties

I work with difficulties including premature ejaculation, delayed ejaculation, difficulty reaching orgasm, and differences between orgasm during solo and partnered sexual activity. Treatment considers psychological, behavioural, relational, medication-related, and physiological contributors where relevant.

Pain during sex

Pain during sex can lead to anticipatory anxiety, muscular tension, avoidance, and changes in desire or intimacy. Therapy addresses the psychological and relational components of these difficulties and, where appropriate, forms part of a multidisciplinary approach alongside medical or pelvic health assessment.

Compulsive sexual behaviour

Compulsive sexual behaviour involves sexual urges or behaviours that feel increasingly difficult to control and continue despite unwanted consequences. Therapy focuses on understanding triggers, reinforcement patterns, emotional regulation, sexual scripts, shame, and the function the behaviour serves, rather than approaching sexuality through moral judgement.

Intimacy and communication difficulties

Communication and alignment around intimacy are foundational to healthy relationships. Sexual difficulties between partners are often maintained not only by differences in desire or functioning, but by what happens when couples try - or stop trying - to talk about them. navigate discrepancies in desire, and foster a stronger emotional and physical connection. This includes addressing the inability to communicate one’s sexual needs, a frequent source of relational tension and personal distress.

Sexuality and gender identity

Navigating issues related to acceptance of one’s sexual orientation, gender dysphoria, or discrimination can be challenging. I support clients in exploring these identities and building self-acceptance, providing an affirming space for all orientations and identities.

Distressing sexual thoughts or fantasies

Sexual thoughts, fantasies, urges, or images can sometimes feel unwanted, confusing, shame-provoking, or difficult to understand. Therapy can help explore their meaning and context, while distinguishing between sexual interests, fantasy, intrusive thoughts, compulsive processes, and concerns driven by anxiety or obsessive doubt.

Compulsive Pornography Use

I work with patterns of pornography use that feel difficult to control, repeatedly conflict with personal intentions or relationships, interfere with daily functioning, or begin to shape sexual arousal and partnered sexual experiences. The focus is on understanding the function and maintaining mechanisms of the behaviour rather than treating pornography itself as inherently pathological.

My Approach to Sensitive Matters

Sexual concerns can be difficult to put into words, particularly when they involve embarrassment, shame, uncertainty, or experiences you may never have discussed with anyone before. You do not need to know the right terminology or arrive with a clear explanation of what is happening.

These conversations are a routine part of my clinical work and are approached with discretion, curiosity, and without moral judgement. We can explore sensitive or complex concerns at a pace that feels manageable, while working toward a clearer understanding of what is happening and what may help.

How I Work

All sessions are based on talk therapy. Any practical exercises or techniques are to be explored individually or together as a couple, outside of the session. I work with individuals and couples of all gender identities, sexual orientations, relationship styles and kink identities, using an affirming, sexuality-diverse approach that is inclusive of LGBTQIA+ and GSRD (Gender, Sexuality, and Relationship Diversity).

Where physical or medical factors may be relevant, I collaborate with or recommend appropriate assessment by GPs, pelvic health specialists, and other medical professionals, supporting an integrated approach to psychological and sexual health.