If you are browsing through this page, you may have encountered something in your life or relationships that may feel unmanageable or difficult to understand or even put into words. This may lead you to dwell on it all the time or you may decide to ignore the problem by not thinking about it or by keeping busy. When none of the above works it may be time to seek professional help.
For some of us, the source of suffering may reflect a purely personal or relationship difficulty. For others it may also relate to a wider unease over our place and reference points in a world changing ever faster culturally and politically. But how to effect personal change still eludes us.
The space of a session is one in which it is possible for a therapist or psychoanalyst to listen carefully to what is being said, to elicit and begin to hear something of the many threads of our lives, traces of speech and experiences of suffering that have affected each of us in a singular way, in mind and body. As such, our experience and orientation teaches us that symptoms will not go away until we have heard what they want to say and grasped something about their function and complex cause in a person's life.
My Approach
My approach involves trying to understand and address difficulties by increasing awareness of the more underlying aspects that lead to the development of symptoms. I will start by being curious and listening carefully at what brought you to therapy: the moments that marked your life, your relationships to others and the worries that may be making life hard. The specific words you use to describe your problems and the thoughts, feelings and memories that may come up during sessions are all important as they can open the way to understanding the less obvious forces that drive behavior.
The effect of the unconscious aspect of symptoms can be seen in the repetitions in our lives; it can be a behaviour that makes us suffer, yet feels impossible to shift away from. Or a way of relating to others that invariably leads to the same conclusion. Despite the distress that symptoms may cause to us or those around us, we may feel unable to stop repeating such patterns. Things that you may find perplexing or that seem out of your control can start making more sense through their progressive unravelling in the course of sessions, through speech.
In psychoanalysis, the different facets and unique logic of symptoms can be explored and punctuated in a way that allows people to take some distance from their suffering and disinvest from symptoms and ways of being that might have felt impossible to do so in the past. By exploring their concerns in such a rigorous way with someone they can trust, people can make deeper, more lasting changes, start breaking old patterns and find creative solutions to their concerns.
I am a Psychoanalyst working in the Lacanian orientation and a member of the London Society of the New Lacanian School. The Lacanian orientation is based on the ideas and theories of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who built on Freud's psychoanalytic approach to develop his own unique clinical practice. Psychoanalysts, particularly from the Lacanian orientation, train over many years to understand how to listen to and intervene effectively on the material brought to sessions understanding them to be clues and connections to what specifically affects a person's life. Becoming a psychoanalyst includes many years of training, together with supervision and a lengthy personal analysis. It further requires the study of a number of different fields but also an ongoing engagement with current theoretical and clinical issues and with how these are affected by socio-political changes in society.
I'm also a qualified Psychodynamic Counsellor and Psychotherapist and an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP).
I work in English and Greek with adults and adolescents. I offer counselling and psychotherapy in Central London, Covent Garden. My practice is easily accessible from Holborn, Westminster, Marylebone, St James’s, Belgravia, Marylebone, Bloomsbury and the Southbank.
Some of the concerns I am experienced of working with are:
- Depression, bereavement and loss
- Relationship problems
- Fertility issues and concerns arising before, during or after pregnancy
- Anxiety, phobias and panic attacks
- Anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders
- Domestic violence and other forms of abuse
- Self-harm and addictions
- Trauma
- Sexual problems
The kinds of worries that bring people to see a psychoanalyst or to consider psychotherapy or counselling are as many and as diverse as the people themselves. There is often a deeply distressing experience which may have led to trauma or a crisis too overwhelming for us to deal with on our own. Inexplicable feelings of depression or anxiety may emerge as a result. Or we may feel unable to move on from past trauma or free ourselves from repetitive choices, behaviours and unhealthy relationship patterns. This may make it increasingly harder for us to enter and maintain relationships which can lead to further depression or anxiety. In many instances, a person visiting a psychotherapist or counsellor may not be able to pinpoint exactly what the problem is but have a general sense of dissatisfaction and lack of fulfilment.
Why come and talk
Sometimes the first step to contacting a therapist is the most difficult: bringing oneself to ask for help. It takes a lot of courage to contact a psychotherapist but it is the first step towards taking your suffering seriously and regaining a sense of control in your life.
You can contact me in confidence to discuss or arrange an initial consultation in Covent Garden. My consulting room for counselling and psychotherapy is only a few minutes’ walk from Covent Garden station, and less than 10 minutes’ from Tottenham Court Road station on the Northern, Central and the new Elizabeth Line.
Please feel free to browse through my website to find out more about me and my therapeutic practice.
