Psychotherapist London
Thinking & Writing
On psychotherapy, the inner life, and the work of change.
The Imposter: Why the Most Successful Feel the Most Fraudulent
Let me begin with the observation that undoes the whole popular picture of imposter syndrome. The people who sit in my consulting room feeling like frauds are …
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The Affair as Symptom: What Infidelity Is Really Saying
When a couple comes into my consulting room after an affair, they usually arrive believing they know what has happened: one of them has done a terrible thing to …
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The Church of Self-Hatred
Thirty years ago, the gym barely existed as it does now. You trained as a complement to a real sport: your legs for football, your arms for karate. The gym was …
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The Coach and the Analyst: Why Executive Coaching Barely Scratches the Surface
The people who come to me for executive coaching in London, from the City, from Canary Wharf, from the funds and firms of Mayfair and St James’s, are, almost …
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The Functioning Alcoholic: When Success Becomes the Mask
Everyone sometimes drinks too much, or for too long. That is not the question. The red flag is when the consequences begin to pile up, professional, relational, …
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The Hole Where the Story Should Be: Trauma, EMDR and the Gentler Door
Beneath most of what I treat, there is a trauma. I have written about the executive who drinks, the successful man who cannot stop the cocaine, the woman who …
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Cocaine and the Illusion of Power
Cocaine is, more than any other drug, the drug of the successful. It belongs to people who are already doing well and want to feel powerful, sharp, unstoppable, …
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Ozempic and Eating Disorders: Why the Weight-Loss Drugs Miss What's Really Wrong
Ozempic can make a body smaller. What it cannot do is answer the question the eating was asking. More and more of the people who contact me now mention Ozempic, …
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The Desert of Isolation and the Garden of Solitude
People ask whether high-functioning depression really exists. In my consulting room it does, but not quite in the way the phrase suggests. The people I see are …
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