** PRACTICE UPDATE – There are now selected appointments available to new clients, please get in touch via email or self referral if you wish to set up a free-of-charge initial consultation **

Hi, I’m Steph, and I’ve been working as a counsellor based in the North East of England since 2014. I work online, offering sessions via Zoom, because I feel it helps make therapy more accessible, and it allows me to connect with people all over the UK.

I’d like to help you understand and push back against the unhelpful and damaging messages you might have received, and build a new way of caring for and valuing who you are and what you needed all along.

Many people I work with are highly empathetic and curious about how to do things the “right” way. They may be on a pathway to discovering that things felt more difficult earlier in life because they are neurodivergent and/or queer, and are now working towards self understanding through these lenses.

We might begin working together by looking into your past – before you or others had a concept of what your identity meant, or certainly before there was true permission, understanding and acceptance to be who you were, or, you might want to start with the future – how to live life with authenticity and self compassion, how to shift our goals to have empathy for what we need and approach things differently with individual strategies that work for YOU.  

Self esteem and trust in ourselves can be badly damaged when we grow up feeling somehow different from other people, or that “if you could just change something about you, life would be easier” , and there can be layers of internalised shaming messages, but with the right support, we can develop the self compassion to unpick and rebuild a different way of seeing ourselves and existing in the world.