I came to therapy via a long, winding route and via my family.

Mental health has touched almost every corner of my life, the way it does for so many of us. But it was a particular thread running through my childhood. My grandmother was diagnosed with schizophrenia before I was born, and lived with it her whole life — something my mum carried as she was growing up. My uncle, someone I was very close to and looked up to enormously, became very unwell when I was a child and was diagnosed with manic depression. I'd visit him in hospital and not understand what I was looking at. He seemed fine to me. He wasn't fine. He died by suicide when I was twelve. He was just thirty-two.

Years later, my brother went through his own crisis as a teenager, after a painful break-up. He developed depression, suicidal thoughts and started hearing voices, and he was sectioned when I was around nineteen. My mum was still carrying her own grief and couldn't fully step in, so I stepped up alongside her as best I could. What ultimately helped pull my brother back, alongside the medical care, was a man — a community carer — who would come and take him out, walk with him, talk with him for a couple of hours at a time, week after week. To this day my brother says that man helped save him.

And then, in my own life, I've had my own challenges. I've known what it is to feel lost, not in any dramatic way, just quietly unsure of who I am or what I really want, particularly after becoming a mum. I've been the over-responsible one for as long as I can remember: the one who has to get it right, who can't let people down, who manages the anxiety by trying to stay one step ahead of it. I know the exhaustion of holding yourself to standards no one else is holding you to. I know what it is to look around at a life that ought to feel like enough and quietly wonder why it doesn't. And I know what it took to begin doing this work on myself.

I don't share any of this lightly. I share it because it's the honest answer to why this work? — and because if you're carrying something heavy yourself, it feels only fair that you know your therapist is human.

What I've taken from all of this is a deep, hard-earned belief in two things.

The first is that none of us is immune. Mental illness doesn't ask permission. We are often only one major change — a bereavement, a break-up, a job loss, a quiet build-up of stress over years — away from a real dip or a real crisis. Looking after ourselves before that point isn't self-indulgence. It's how we build the resilience to weather what comes. You're allowed to come to therapy because something feels off, because you're tired in a way sleep isn't fixing, because you'd quite like to stop being so hard on yourself. You don't have to earn it by falling apart first.

The second is the enormous difference one person can make. Someone who sits with you. Hears you. Walks with you. Takes you seriously. That community carer who showed up for my brother and the support worker my uncle never had, are two of the reasons I'm in this work. I'd like to be that for someone.

The long detour

I didn't come to therapy in a straight line. When I finally let myself train as a psychotherapist, it was the first time my career felt less like a job and more like the right room to be in. I sometimes describe it as coming full circle, the safest bet, it turns out, is following what was always pulling at you.

What this means for the work we'd do together

My route here means I bring two things to the room. One is a real understanding of the pressures we are living under — the perfectionism, the over-functioning, the quiet slow burn-out — because I lived it. The other is a fierce belief that getting support before things break is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself. You don't need to be in crisis to come to therapy. You're allowed to come because something just feels off, or because you'd like to know yourself better, or because you'd quite like to stop being so hard on yourself.

If any of this resonates, I'd love to hear from you.