Counselling and Therapy in Liverpool and Online
A relationship in which you can be fully human
There are times when carrying everything alone becomes too much.
You may know exactly what is troubling you, or you may only have a quiet sense that something is not right — that you feel disconnected, overwhelmed, stuck in familiar patterns or unable to live as freely and fully as you would like.
Therapy offers a space to slow down, listen more deeply to yourself and explore what is happening beneath the surface.
I offer individual counselling and therapy for adults in Liverpool and online across the UK. My approach is warm, relational, trauma-informed and grounded in a deep respect for the whole person.
You do not need to arrive with the right words, a clear explanation or a carefully organised story. We can begin with whatever is present.
What might bring you to therapy?
People come to therapy for many different reasons. You may be experiencing:
Anxiety, panic, stress or a constant sense of overwhelm.
Depression, low mood, numbness or a loss of meaning and enjoyment.
Trauma, childhood emotional neglect or painful family experiences.
Shame, self-criticism, perfectionism or low self-worth.
Grief, bereavement, separation or another significant loss.
Burnout, exhaustion or the pressure of always having to keep going.
Difficulties with relationships, trust, intimacy or boundaries.
Anger, emotional intensity, shutdown or dissociation.
People-pleasing, over-responsibility or fear of disappointing others.
Substance use, compulsive behaviour or other ways of coping that no longer feel helpful.
Questions concerning identity, race, culture, sexuality, masculinity, spirituality or belonging.
Neurodivergence or the experience of being misunderstood, overwhelmed or made to feel that you are somehow “too much” or “not enough.”
A major change, crossroads or period of uncertainty.
A desire to understand yourself more deeply and live with greater freedom, authenticity and purpose.
You may also be functioning well on the outside while struggling privately within. You do not have to wait until you are in crisis, and you do not need to justify why your pain is serious enough to deserve care.
You are not broken
At the heart of my work is a simple conviction:
You are not broken.
Many of the patterns that now cause pain began as ways of protecting you, surviving difficult experiences or preserving important relationships.
Rather than asking, “What is wrong with you?”, we can explore what happened, what you have had to carry, what those patterns have been protecting and what is now ready to change.
Hypervigilance, withdrawal, perfectionism, people-pleasing, emotional numbness, anger, overthinking and compulsive ways of coping can all make sense when we understand the conditions in which they developed.
What once protected you may now be restricting you. But lasting change rarely comes through attacking or shaming these parts of yourself. It begins by meeting them with curiosity, compassion and enough safety to discover another way.
Your pain matters, but it is not the whole of who you are.
What will it feel like to work with me?
My style is warm, grounded, collaborative and human.
I am not a distant expert who will analyse you from behind a professional mask. Nor will I simply sit silently while you struggle to work everything out alone.
I will listen deeply and carefully. I may ask questions, reflect what I am hearing, notice patterns, help you attend to what is happening in your body or gently invite you to look at something from another angle. Where it feels useful, we may explore what is happening between us in the present moment, because the therapeutic relationship can reveal both old wounds and new possibilities.
In our work together, I will aim to:
Meet you with warmth, respect and genuine curiosity.
Understand your experience from within your world rather than imposing an explanation upon it.
Offer honesty and thoughtful challenge without judgement or harshness.
Follow your pace without avoiding what most needs attention.
Help you recognise the meaning and intelligence within your ways of surviving.
Make room for uncertainty, contradiction, humour, silence and strong emotion.
Support you to develop a more compassionate and trustworthy relationship with yourself.
You will not need to perform, explain yourself perfectly or earn the right to be treated with care.
More than talking about your thoughts
Insight can be powerful, but we do not experience life through the mind alone.
Our histories also live in our bodies, nervous systems, emotions, relationships and ways of responding to the world. You might intellectually understand why you feel a certain way while still finding that your body reacts as though an old danger is happening now.
Depending on what you need, our sessions may include:
Reflective conversation and searching enquiry.
Exploring emotions and the meanings they carry.
Noticing sensations, breathing, tension and other bodily responses.
Understanding fight, flight, freeze, fawn, shutdown or dissociation.
Grounding and nervous-system regulation.
Compassionate work with different parts of yourself.
Exploring patterns within relationships.
Existential questions about meaning, freedom, mortality and purpose.
Silence, imagery, creativity or symbolic exploration.
Spiritual reflection or simple ritual practices where these are wanted and appropriate.
We will work collaboratively and consensually. I will not push you to revisit painful experiences before there is enough safety and trust to do so.
Healing does not require you to overwhelm yourself or repeatedly relive everything that has happened. It can begin by learning to remain present, feel without becoming flooded and meet your experience with less fear and violence towards yourself.
Your life has a context
Your distress does not exist in isolation from the world around you.
Family, attachment, class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, culture, faith and experiences of power or exclusion can all shape how you understand yourself and how safe you have felt to be fully seen.
A person can be wounded by relationships, but also by racism, poverty, homophobia, ableism, cultural displacement, discrimination and other systems that repeatedly communicate that some lives matter less than others.
Therapy should not turn these realities into an individual defect.
My work is anti-oppressive and decolonial in its orientation. This means that we can name the social and cultural forces affecting your life while also exploring your unique emotional and relational experience. We can honour the strategies that helped you survive without pretending that they are no longer causing pain.
Personal healing and social reality belong in the same conversation.
Racial trauma, identity and belonging
I have particular experience supporting Black and mixed-heritage people with the emotional, psychological, relational and embodied effects of racism.
This may include racial trauma, racialised shame, cultural disconnection, code-switching, intergenerational wounds or the exhaustion of moving through spaces in which you do not feel fully recognised.
Questions such as Who am I? Where do I belong? Which parts of myself are safe to express? can carry enormous personal, cultural and ancestral weight.
As a mixed-heritage man from a working-class African-Caribbean and Irish family, this work is personally meaningful as well as professionally informed. I understand the importance of not having to educate your therapist about every aspect of racism or leave culturally significant parts of yourself outside the room.
Clients of every racial and cultural background are welcome. This specialism means that race, culture, power and belonging will not be treated as irrelevant when they matter to your experience.
Spirituality, meaning and the whole person
For some people, spirituality is central to how they understand themselves. For others, it is complicated, uncertain, painful or not personally relevant at all.
My own life has been shaped by Zen practice, Reiki, Catholic contemplative and mystical traditions, African-Caribbean spirituality, ancestral practice and a non-initiated relationship with Haitian Vodou. These traditions inform the depth, presence and reverence I try to bring to my work, but I will never expect you to share my beliefs.
Therapy with me can make room for prayer, meditation, ritual, ancestral meaning, spiritual experience, religious wounds, doubt and questions about what you consider sacred. These dimensions will only enter our work where they matter to you and with your clear consent.
People understand spiritual experience in many ways: as sacred reality, energy, archetype, symbolism, psychology or some combination of these. I do not need you to adopt my understanding. What matters is whether something helps you experience greater meaning, connection, depth and aliveness.
People of all faiths, spiritual traditions and none are warmly welcome.
For those seeking explicitly spiritual services such as spiritual counselling, Reiki, cleansing, spiritual baths, candle work or ancestral ritual and ceremony, these are offered within a separate and clearly defined strand of my work through Legba’s Gate.
Therapy is connection, not perfection
I do not offer quick fixes or a perfected version of human life.
Therapy cannot remove every loss, uncertainty or vulnerability. What it can offer is a different way of meeting yourself and your life: with greater awareness, compassion, freedom and choice.
Therapy is not about becoming perfect.
It is about becoming more connected: to your body, your emotions, your truth, your dignity, your relationships, your values and the life you actually want to live.
It may help you become less divided within yourself, less governed by shame and fear, more able to recognise what you need and more willing to live without continually abandoning or betraying yourself.
The task is not perfection.
The task is wholeheartedness.
Beginning therapy
Reaching out to a therapist can feel vulnerable, particularly if you are used to handling things alone or have not always felt understood by others.
You do not need to write a long account of everything you have experienced. Simply tell me a little about what is bringing you to therapy and whether you would prefer to meet in Liverpool or online.
We can then consider whether I might be the right person to support you and discuss the next steps.
You do not have to see the whole path before taking the first step.