Before deciding whether to meet

The practical information

Psychotherapy sessions: 60 minutes

Fee: £145 per session

Where: Online, using video conferencing within the Writeupp Therapy Practice software (like Zoom)

Availability: I usually have availability for new clients, but please do contact me to ask.

Frequency: You are not required to attend weekly, and wont be asked to. We engage with sessions of the frequecy best tailored for you, and what we are doing, at any one time.

Booking: Sessions are booked by you using a booking link, and paid for online, using debit or credit card taken by Writeupp using Stripe payment processor.

Discovery call: 20 minutes, The fee for this is £25.

Cancellation arrangements: Please let me know if you’re unable to attend. We can rearrrange or refund you as appropriate. The full fee is still payable for sessions that are due to commence within 48 hours. Please see terms for specific details

Who I work with: Individual adults

Neurodiversity: Much of my work is with autistic, ADHD and AuDHD folks. Often, but not always, clients are people discovering lateely about being neurodivergent, or perhaps meaning-making now about having always been neurodivergent. I am AuDHD myself., and have visited this area of enquiry about myself in many ways, and with different levels of relevance to me.

What kind of therapy do I do?

I have trained in a number of different approaches to psychotherapy over several decades.

I don't think naming a modality tells a prospective client very much about what it will actually be like to work with a therapist. All of the major therapeutic traditions contain useful ideas and ways of working. What matters considerably more in my own practice is knowing what is useful here, with this person, in relation to this situation, at this point.

So I do not ask people to fit themselves into one therapeutic model.

Sometimes the work calls for close attention to relationships and what is happening between people. Sometimes an older experience becomes relevant. Sometimes we need to understand a pattern. Sometimes there is something quite immediate to resolve. Sometimes an idea or piece of information changes the picture. Sometimes what matters is meaning, identity, possibility, grief, anger, conflict, choice or what is happening in the person's life right now.

My work changes according to what the work requires.

What stays more consistent is that I pay close attention, think actively with the person, try to understand the shape of what is happening, and contribute where I have something useful to contribute.

You do not need to tell me everything before we meet

An enquiry email is not the place to send a detailed personal history.

And if you book a discovery call, you do not need to spend the twenty minutes trying to give me a compressed account of your entire life so that I can decide whether I can work with you.

That tends to use up most of the call while giving you surprisingly little information about the thing you are trying to decide.

In most cases, my question is not:

“Am I able to work with this person's problem?”

The much more useful question during a discovery call is yours:

“Do I want to work with this therapist?”

What can you actually find out in twenty minutes?

A discovery call cannot reproduce psychotherapy in miniature.

We have only just met. I do not yet know you, the wider situation, what matters most within it, what has happened around it, or what we may discover once we begin working properly.

So there would be little value in me trying to tell you exactly what I would “do” with your problem before I understand it.

What twenty minutes can give you is some direct evidence.

You can notice what happens when you tell me something real.

Do I seem to understand what you are saying?

Do I notice things that matter?

When I say something back, does it illuminate anything or simply sound plausible?

Can you follow how I am thinking?

Do I seem responsive to you as a person rather than merely interested in categorising the problem?

What happens if something is complicated, contradictory or difficult to explain?

How does it feel to be in conversation with me?

Do you find yourself wanting another fifty or sixty minutes of this conversation?

Those observations are usually much more useful than knowing the names of every psychotherapy model I have studied.

What should you bring to the call?

You do not need to prepare a presentation, or a timline or anything like that (unless it is what you feel is appropriate.

You also don't need to tell me your whole history.

Bring enough of something real for us to have an actual conversation.

That might be a little of what has made you consider therapy now, something you particularly want to know about working with me, something you have found difficult in previous therapeutic relationships, or simply whatever seems most useful to put into the room when the call begins.

If you are not sure what to say first, that is also fine. We can start there.

The important thing is not to use twenty minutes trying to make me understand the whole case.

I am accustomed to being in these 20 min conversations, and, although everyone is very different, I am used to not only listening to you, but also steering to important areas for us to include. There will be time for me to understand you properly if we decide to work together.

Do I need to know which therapy modality I want?

No.

If you specifically want therapy conducted within a particular therapeutic tradition, you are of course welcome to ask whether I work in that way.

But you do not need to research psychotherapy modalities in order to become a sufficiently informed consumer of therapy.

Questions such as “Which model of therapy do use use?” or “Do you work with ‘X’ issue?” are often attempts to answer a much larger and more important question:

“What will it be like when I bring something important in my life to you, and what are you capable of doing with it?”

That is a very reasonable thing to want to know.

It is simply difficult to answer by giving you the name of a modality.

Neurodiversity

If I am saying I work with neurodivergent clients, it is because I already expect it to matter.

Not every problem is secretly “about autism” or “about ADHD”. A marriage problem is still a marriage problem. A workplace situation is still a workplace situation. Something painful that happened is still something that happened.

It means that I am not starting from the assumption that the neurodivergent person in front of me operates according to a typical-human template and then asking them to explain every departure from it, .

As I have said, being autistic and an ADHD-er is openly part of my professional identity., as well as my personal lived and embodied reality.

Should I book the discovery call or a full session?

If your position is:

“I have read enough. This sounds like the person I want to begin working with.”

Then I invite you to condier requesting to book the initial full hour for us,.

If it is:

“This sounds potentially right, but I need some direct experience of her before I can decide.”

Then, ask to book the discovery call.

If you are still mainly looking for factual information about fees, availability, format or practical arrangements, you should be able to find that information here without paying for a call.

Deciding afterwards

There is no expectation that you agree to psychotherapy while we are on the discovery call.

You are welcome to say that you would like to work with me if you already know.

You are equally welcome to say goodbye, go away and think.

The call has done its job if you leave with better information from which to make your own decision.

You can read my blog articles here