Individual Counselling and Therapy
People come at moments where the ground has shifted or is quietly shifting — after a loss, when a relationship has ended or is asking to be lived differently. A career that once felt purposeful now feels hollow. The life on paper no longer matches the life inside.
Sometimes there is no clear crisis. Yes life may look manageable, from the outside. Something feels wrong, empty or increasingly difficult to ignore.
You don’t need to have reached a certain threshold or have a diagnosis or a precise explanation of what is wrong.
Individual therapy lets us understand what is happening, how you have got to where you are now, and what you want to do about it.
What might bring you to therapy
The difficulties people bring resist neat categories. They overlap, they shift, and they are always more particular than any list can capture. What follows is a rough map of the territory we might explore together — not as a diagnostic checklist, but a way of saying: if something here resonates, it is worth paying attention to.
Anxiety, panic and stress
Depression, low mood and grief
Depression is a word that many people use to describe different feelings and experiences of emptiness or intense sadness, a sense of collapse, or a loss of interest in things that once mattered. It can be strange distance from your own life.
Grief can be triggered by death, the end of a relationship, collapse of identity or loss of hope.
Not all losses are recognised by those around you, while some of the most significant go entirely unnoticed and perhaps unnamed.
Our work is not to “get over” what you are feeling. That framing misunderstands what grief and depression ask of us. The work is to understand what this experience means in the context of your particular life — and to discover, slowly, who you are becoming in its wake.
Anger, guilt, shame and recurring conflict
Anger often rises when something feels unfair, when a boundary has been crossed, when something important has been dismissed. But it can also arrive from less obvious places — fear, old injury, sheer exhaustion and the cumulative weight of things swallowed rather than spoken.
Guilt can be productive or corrosive, circling endlessly around things you cannot change. Shame goes deeper: it is not about whether “I did something wrong”, rather “I am something wrong”. It hides, avoids exposure, and builds elaborate defences. Each of these can drive patterns — with others, and with yourself — that are difficult to break alone. What would they say if they could speak clearly?
Relationships, isolation and belonging
Whether it is a pattern that keeps repeating, a growing distance from someone you love, a family dynamic that seems impossible to shift, or a difficulty trusting or being close to others — relationship struggles have a way of touching everything. We are always shaped by and in relation to the people around us, and the ways we move toward or away from others are rarely chosen consciously.
For those living cross-cultural, multilingual, or expat lives — which I share, and which many of my clients live — loneliness often takes a particular form: a longing for the familiar, for a shared sense of humour, for the feeling of being known without having to explain yourself from scratch.
In therapy, we look closely at these patterns and at where you might choose a different step.
Identity, self-worth and life transitions
Some changes arrive suddenly; others unfold over years. Each asks you to become someone slightly different from who you were — and that is not always welcome. You may need to mourn the loss of a phase now past. You may need to figure out who you are in a new reality. You may feel between worlds, or find yourself masking parts of yourself to fit.
Questions of identity — including sexuality, belonging, and how you carry your cultural background — can become urgent when the roles that once defined you shift, or when the person you are in one context sits uneasily with the person you are in another. When connection to your own values is lost, low self-esteem, self-doubt and people-pleasing fill the space. How do you find your way back?
By restoring the connection, rather than putting on a better performance.
Purpose, meaning, choices and responsibility
It is painful when the sense of meaning goes quiet. You feel you are in the wrong job, living the wrong life, or simply cannot see the point. With meaning comes responsibility: every choice forecloses others, and the freedom to choose can feel as paralysing as the absence of options. As Frankl understood, meaning is rarely found by looking inward in isolation. It emerges through engagement — with the world, with other people, and with something beyond the self.
Hard as these moments of lostness are, they are not final. They can be the turning point from which you reconnect with a direction that genuinely feels like yours.
Addictive, compulsive and difficult habits
I do not reduce addictions or compulsive behaviour to a diagnosis. Whether the pattern involves substances, food, screens, relationships, or work, we explore what it does for you — what it manages, what it masks, what it makes bearable — alongside its consequences and any medical or physical risks.
Understanding the function of a pattern is where honest change usually begins — with the recognition that something in the wider life needs attending to. Something the habit has been answering on your behalf.
Where specialist or medical support is needed, we will discuss that openly.
The body in therapy
Is your body something you have, or something you are? The question might sound abstract, but it shapes everything — how we hold tension, how we recognise our own emotions, how we show up in a room. There is no experience without a physical body — no feeling, no relationship, no moment of therapy. Many of us live at a considerable distance from our physical selves. How often we ignore these signals or feel disconnected from our bodies.
Embodiment is central to how I work. Alongside the conversation, I pay attention to what your body is telling us — tension, breath, posture, the places where experience lives physically rather than only in words. I also offer walk-and-talk sessions outdoors, which bring a different quality of presence and a different kind of conversation.
The existential perspective
I should say something about how I think about the difficulties described above, because it shapes everything else.
I am interested in how a difficulty affects your daily life — and in the place it has come to occupy within it. Anxiety may be drawing attention to an important gap between how you are living and how you want to live. Anger may be connected with a boundary or injury that has not found another expression. A compulsive pattern may have become a way of managing feelings or creating control where none seemed available.
What if these signals were worth listening to carefully, before deciding what to do about them?
These are possibilities worth exploring together. We discover what your experience means in the context of your life, while also taking its consequences seriously. I will not romanticise your distress or insist that every symptom carries a hidden message. Some suffering simply needs to ease before any understanding becomes possible. But I will not reduce your experience to a label either.
Relief matters. So does understanding. The work holds both.
Where there is medical risk, psychological complexity beyond what therapy alone can address, or the lasting impact of overwhelming or traumatic experiences, I will name that honestly. Where specialist support is needed alongside our work, we will discuss it openly.
How sessions work
Therapy with me is an honest conversation about your life. You are the expert of your own life — I will not pretend to know how you should live, and I will not offer a ready-made answer. What I bring is careful attention, professional training, and another perspective. I am both with you and for you: walking alongside you, staying focused on what matters to you.
We begin with what brought you in and let the shape of the work follow from there — sometimes practical and present-focused, sometimes reaching into longer-standing patterns, sometimes drawing on psychodrama or embodied methods when talking about something is not enough and it needs to be worked with more directly. There is no fixed programme. At times I may challenge you, gently and directly, when something seems important or when familiar explanations no longer appear to help.
The pace and direction are agreed together and reviewed honestly as we go. You do not need to know what kind of therapy would suit you before making contact — that is something we can work out together.
Practical information
- Individual sessions last 50 minutes.
- Sessions usually take place weekly.
- I see clients online across the UK and internationally, and in person in Riga.
- Sessions are available in English, Latvian, and Russian.
- A free introductory call lasts 15–20 minutes, by phone or video.
- Fees are discussed during the introductory call.
I work in accordance with the UKCP Code of Ethics and under the supervision of experienced colleagues.
Get in touch
A free first conversation
Beginning therapy can feel uncertain, especially if you have never spoken openly about what is happening, or are not yet sure how to describe it. That is completely fine. You do not need to have the words ready.
I offer a free 15–20 minute call, by phone or video. A chance for you to say briefly what’s brought you, hear how I work, and see whether working together feels right — a conversation, not a commitment.
You’re welcome to get in touch.
Let's Connect
Reach Out
To book a session or ask a question, feel free to call, send a WhatsApp or text message to +44(0)7903848913, or complete the contact form. I’ll respond as promptly as possible.
I’m happy to take your call unless I’m in a session. If I’m unavailable, please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can to answer any questions.
