A person-centred approach to therapy
Person-centred therapy is rooted in the work of psychologist Carl Rogers, whose pioneering research into the qualities of helping relationships led to a new, deeply respectful way of approaching psychological distress, and a therapeutic approach that placed the client’s subjective experience and innate capacity for growth at its heart.
A radical relational tradition
Rather than diagnosing or analysing people, the person-centred approach sees each person as the expert in their own life—someone with the capacity to grow, make sense of their experience, and move forward when met with the right kind of relationship.
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The core values of this approach—presence, empathy, and unconditionality—remain radical even today. They’re not techniques, but attitudes that shape the whole therapeutic relationship. When these qualities are offered consistently, they can foster the kind of trust and safety needed to explore difficult experiences and discover new ways of relating to yourself and the world.
Respect for your autonomy
While there are many developments and branches of person-centred therapy, my practice is grounded in the classical tradition, sometimes known as client-centred therapy. This means that you guide the process: you decide what we talk about, how deep we go, and how the therapy unfolds. My role is to accompany you—to listen attentively, respond with care, and trust in your capacity to find your own direction.
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To borrow the words of therapist and theorist Barbara Brodley, a person-centred therapist aims “to experience the values of respect and trust as consistently and deeply as possible, and to act in relation to clients only in ways that express those values.”
Responsive to the world within
​​​Therapy, in this sense, isn’t about being fixed—it’s about being met. That includes being met in the complexity of your social world: all the ways in which systems, histories, and relationships have shaped your experience and may still be affecting how you live and feel today.
Therapy can’t undo these external realities, but it can help create a space in which their impact can be felt, explored, and better understood—where internalised voices of judgment or exclusion can be gently examined, and where your own voice may begin to find clearer and more confident expression.