Early in my career, I worked extensively with people experiencing severe eating disorders. Although I valued the evidence-based approaches I was using, I became increasingly curious about why some people improved while others continued to struggle. I often felt that beneath the symptoms was emotional pain that needed to be understood, rather than simply managed.

That search eventually led me to Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). Its focus on understanding emotional conflicts, unconscious patterns and the ways we learn to protect ourselves made immediate sense to me. It offered a compassionate but active way of helping people understand not just their symptoms, but what was driving them.

Over the years, my work has naturally evolved towards supporting people with more complex difficulties — often those who have experienced trauma, struggled in relationships, lived with persistent emotional or physical symptoms, or found that previous therapy hasn’t quite reached the heart of the problem.