MY WORK IN PRACTICE

What the path can look like.

Three illustrations of the kind of work we might do together.

These are composite, fictional case studies. Names and details are hypothetical; no real clients are represented. The patterns, however, are very real.

CHRONIC ILLNESS

Sophie had a diagnosis. What they needed was a way to live with it.

Presenting issue: FND (Functional Neurological Disorder), grief of past self, acceptance

Sophie, 32, had been diagnosed with FND after years of unexplained symptoms. They described feeling like both a stranger and prisoner in their own body, grieving the person they used to be, exhausted from fighting a reality they couldn't change, and increasingly angry at themselves for not "getting better."

Our work wasn't about fixing their illness. It was about exploring their very real grief for their pre-FND self, understanding the patterns of self-criticism and resistance that were adding to their suffering, and finding a way forward that honoured both their limitations and their very real strengths.

Sophie found a new normal, one they built themselves, on their own terms. They stopped fighting themselves and started moving forward, with far more compassion for who they actually are now.

IDENTITY & SHAME

James felt broken. His attractions didn't fit the story he'd been told about himself.

Presenting issue: Bisexual identity creating internalised shame, anxiety

James, 28, had grown up in a conservative community. He'd always been attracted to both men and women, and the messages he'd internalised told him this made him fundamentally flawed, broken, wrong, something to be fixed. The shame was relentless and was driving anxiety, withdrawal, and self-destructive drinking.

Together we unpacked where those messages came from, not to relive his upbringing, but to clearly separate James from the beliefs he'd absorbed as a child. The deep work was about finding his actual self beneath the shame he'd been carrying since he was a young boy.

James moved from feeling broken to feeling whole. His drinking stopped being a problem. He built friendships and connections that felt honest, real, and entirely his own.

IMPULSE CONTROL

Mark kept losing his temper, and losing the people he loved.

Presenting issue: Anger & impulsive reactivity

Mark, 34, came in after his partner threatened to leave. His anger was explosive, at work, at home, in traffic. He'd tried willpower alone, and kept failing. He was ashamed and didn't understand why he couldn't just stop.

At the surface level, we worked on the patterns: what triggered the reaction, psycho-eduction, what happened in his body, how to interrupt the cycle before it escalated. But the real shift came deeper, mapping how Mark had grown up in a house where anger was the only emotion anyone expressed. His reactions weren't random. They made complete sense once we could see them clearly.

Over nine months, Mark rebuilt and developed a completely different relationship with his own anger. He didn't stop feeling it, he learned to understand it, and it stopped controlling him.