You’re a high-achiever, perhaps an entrepreneur or CEO. Your employeees love you, people love you because you are caring and fair. If they knew how you felt inside they would be shocked. You often feel wracked/riddled with anxiety, obsessive and compulsive thoughts or panic attacks and depression. You might be sitting at your kitchen table enjoying coffee and the paper with your partner on a Saturday morning and all of a sudden are hit from nowhere with a bout of depression or waves of anxiety, totally spoling your weekend plan to go surfing. Obsesseive thoughts might go around and aroudn in your head in which you question your sexuality or your life choices. You worry that you feel this way because you are living the wrong life, the wrong marriage. You fear you will never be happy. That despite having tried various interventions there is something seriously and permanentlly wrong with you and that you are unfixable. Or that at some point you will have to give up your CEO job and be seen as a failure professionally and also failing as a father to your kids.. You feel like you’re not in control of your life. You’re constantly doing things for others to please the stakeholders, to please the national manager, to allay the stress of your employees or to bring money home to your partner and kids.
You wish you could confide in a caring, safe and confidential expert who would tell you exactly what was wrong and hand you a proven formula to feel better. Who had seen it all before and could help you feel less alone and less different. On completing the sessions you’d feel calmer, freer, more happy, more connected to others and more worthy. Your wife wouldnt’ pity you anymore. Your parents would stop patronising you and respect you more. Your brother would be less of a bully. Work wouldn’t know any difference as you already put on a good show at work and are loved by all my team. However you’d feel more confident to plan a different future for example a work sabattical to travel the world with your wife and kids surfing and cycling. You dare to be more honest and vulnerable with your partner and ask for more of what you need to feel more emotionally and sexually fulfilled in your marriage.
A 12-week bespoke online therapy programme which is highly focussed on achieving just one concrete specific outcome. After an initial assessment, each weekly session is 50-minutes and I use a range of therapies from EMDR to IFS to Gestalt Therapy to really target the issue and create sustainable changes.
This is for you if are committed to showing up weekly. If you are willing to do any homework we agree on in between sessions. If you value your mental health, work and relationships and are willing to invest to protect them. If you are ok with the idea you might temporarily feel worse as blocks start to shift.
This is not for you if you prioritise finding the cheapest deals over your mental health. If you are uncommitted and unable to show up on a weekly basis. If you prioritise other things like work meetings over your therapy session. If you are uncomfortable with feeling a bit more uncomfortable a few sessions in. If you are unwilling to do the work outside of sessions. If you expect me to tell you what to do.
As a high-achiever we can often have unhelpful negative beliefs that we are aware of or may not be aware of. One is that we are not good enough. We aim to rectify this by over-doing as our sense of worth is attached to our external achievements and success. We often have a part that drives us and is never satisfied with any of our accomplishments. It is often very critical and will compare us unfavourably to others and give us a very hard time for any ‘perceived failures’. Of course there is nothing inherently ‘wrong’ with how we are if we are also happy and fulfilled. The problem arises when the need to achieve and succeed means we drive ourselves too hard and experience high and chronic anxiety and stress. As well as impacting our relationships and health it can then lead to addictions in order to get temporary relief. It can also lead to depression as our nervous system can no longer deal with operating at such a high-level of anxiety. In therapy we tackle these unhelfpul beliefs and behaviours so that you are able to enjoy the natural drive and motivation you have whilst also having a balanced way of living and balanced and healthy relationships.
Specific issues I work with amongst others are:
Anxiety
Depression
Relationship Issues
Panic attacks
OCD
Addictions
Perfectionism
"When I came to see you I had been signed off work for 3 months with depression. I felt helpless to overcome my low mood and anxiety. With a combination of our sessions and medication I am now living a full life. I feel more in control in my Managing Director role and am finally free to enjoy family life too. I feel so much more present. Thank you!"
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Meet your Executive Coach and Therapist, Alexandra
I’m Alexandra, an accredited Gestalt psychotherapist and EMDR practitioner working with individuals and groups. I trained for six years at the Gestalt Centre London and have done additional Attachment-Focussed EMDR Therapy training with leaders in the field, Mark Brayne in the UK and Laurell Parnell in the US. As well as a flourishing private practice I have worked for a private Harley St psychiatric clinic in London as well as Associate Tutor at the University of Surrey Counselling Psychology Doctorate programme. Due to my special interest in trauma I worked as a specialist complex trauma therapist at the world-renowned Khiron House residential trauma treatment facility. Most recently I have been the Year Tutor teaching on the Gestalt Therapy MA programme at the Gestalt Centre, London.
I believe in you and that with support, you can create any shifts you want to. I work on the Gestalt Therapy premise that all of our actions, even those viewed as negative, have a creative function. Therefore the aim is not to get rid of them but rather to own them more fully. By fully accepting who we are, we do not work against our creative energy and this opens up the possibility to do things differently and to lead a fuller and richer life. I have additional experience in Internal Family Systems which marries very well with Gestalt Therapy and EMDR.
As part of my holistic therapeutic approach I invite you to notice the whole of your experience from body, mind, emotions as well as how you experience yourself in the room with me. I view all of this as information on how past experiences impact your present.I do this in a gentle, compassionate way with respect for your own pace whilst at the same time providing challenge and allowing opportunities to try different ways of expressing yourself, in the safety of an online therapy session.
A highly experienced and skilled psychotherapist. I have undergone around 8 years of therapy training myself which is essential to really go deep with someone. As a Type A myself, I have a lot of experience working with CEOs and entrepreneurs. I manage to balance the patience, compassion and self-acceptance necessary for therapy to work, with the need for progress, goals and structure that high-achievers often crave. I value authenticity: this shows up in how I express myself to you and how I try to ‘get’ the true you. I aim to accept your individuality in all its diversity. I excel at making things happen and gettng results and I delight in supporting you to realise the truest, happiest version of yourself.
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