Welcome to my website!
I help people create a life they love
Therapy, Coaching & Support-Meeting You Where You Are
You don’t need to know exactly what’s wrong before you ask for help.
After more than 25 years working across counselling, psychotherapy, coaching, mental health services, service development and wellbeing, I’ve learned that most people don’t arrive with the whole story neatly worked out.
They arrive with what they can name.
“I’m exhausted.”
“I’m stressed.”
“I don’t feel like myself.”
“I know what I should do, but I can’t seem to do it.”
“I keep ending up in the same patterns.”
“Everything looks fine, but I’m not happy.”
“My life has changed and I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“I just know something needs to change.”
That is enough to begin.
My job isn’t to decide immediately which label fits you. It is to help us understand what is happening, what might be contributing to it, what is already helping, and what kind of support might actually be useful.
How I Work
My approach has developed through more than 25 years of working with people and mental health from very different perspectives. I originally trained as a counsellor and psychotherapist and later developed additional skills across coaching, NLP, hypnotherapy, emotional regulation, mindfulness, meditation and other approaches to psychological and emotional wellbeing.
Alongside direct therapeutic work, I have worked within Local Authority and NHS mental health services, service design and management, quality improvement, professional training programmes and large-scale mental health initiatives.
I have worked with children, young people, adults, families, professionals, leaders and people navigating some of the most difficult periods of their lives.
That breadth of experience has taught me not to assume that the first explanation is necessarily the whole explanation.
- Sometimes what looks like anxiety is connected to overload.
- Sometimes procrastination is about fear, perfectionism or exhaustion.
- Sometimes burnout isn’t only about work.
- Sometimes a relationship problem is also about identity, boundaries or an old pattern that no longer fits.
- Sometimes somebody doesn’t need another coping strategy. Something in their life actually needs to change.
- And sometimes a person simply needs enough breathing space to work out what is happening.
So rather than beginning with a fixed programme, we begin with you.
We might explore:
Where are you now?
What has been happening recently, and how long have you felt this way?
What has happened around you?
Relationships, work, family, health, loss, responsibilities, money, major changes and the wider environment all affect how we function.
What are you carrying?
What is taking up emotional or mental bandwidth, including things you may have become so accustomed to carrying that you barely notice them anymore?
What is working?
I don’t only look for problems. We look at strengths, relationships, resources, skills, routines and parts of life that are already supporting you.
What is increasing the pressure or keeping you stuck?
This might include beliefs, patterns, unresolved experiences, difficult relationships, habits, environments or simply too many demands competing for limited capacity.
What stage of change are you in?
Knowing something needs to change is different from knowing what to do. Knowing what to do is different again from feeling ready or able to do it.
What kind of support fits where you are now?
That might involve therapeutic exploration, practical tools, coaching, emotional regulation, structure, experimentation, rest, boundaries or making changes in everyday life.
Then we ask:
What is the next workable step?
Talking Matters — But Talking Isn’t Always the Whole Answer
I value the therapeutic relationship enormously. Having somewhere you can speak honestly, think aloud and be heard without judgement can itself be powerful. But my work doesn’t necessarily stop there.
Depending on what we discover, we may use practical tools, create structure, examine beliefs, work with emotional responses, experiment with different behaviours, identify boundaries, make a plan or look at what needs to change around you.
I work with both your internal world — thoughts, feelings, beliefs, patterns, values and past experiences — and your external ecology: relationships, work, responsibilities, environment, resources, pressures and opportunities. Because mental health doesn’t happen in isolation.
Sometimes improving how we feel involves developing different ways of thinking or responding.
Sometimes it involves changing the conditions in which the mind is trying to function.
Often it involves some combination of both.
You Might Recognise Yourself Here
People come to me through many different doorways.
You may be functioning perfectly well from the outside while privately wondering why everything feels so difficult.
You may recognise yourself in questions such as:
“Nothing is terribly wrong. I just don’t know what I’m doing with my life.”
You have work, relationships or routines, but something feels flat, restless or no longer quite yours.
“I know what I should do. Why can’t I make myself do it?”
You understand the problem intellectually, perhaps even know what would help, but keep procrastinating, avoiding or returning to the same patterns.
“I’ve spent years being the one who holds everything together.”
You are capable and responsible, but increasingly exhausted by how much everyone and everything seems to depend upon you.
“My life changed — but I haven’t caught up with it yet.”
Retirement, separation, children leaving home, relocation, career change or another transition has removed some of the structure or identity you previously relied upon.
“I know this relationship isn’t good for me. Why do I keep going back?”
You understand something isn’t working but find leaving, staying away, setting boundaries or understanding the relationship much more complicated than other people seem to think it should be.
“I’ve left. I’m safe. So what happens now?”
The immediate crisis may have passed, but rebuilding identity, confidence, relationships, work and ordinary life after a difficult or controlling relationship can be another stage of recovery altogether.
“I know something is wrong. I’m exhausted — but I don’t know why.”
You may be calling it burnout, but together we need to understand what is actually consuming your capacity and whether the answer lies in recovery, relationships, work, beliefs, environment, health, life direction — or several things at once.
“I’ve done therapy before. I understand myself — so why am I still stuck?”
Insight is valuable, but understanding why something happens doesn’t automatically make it easier to change.
You don’t need to decide which category you belong in.
These aren’t diagnoses.
They are simply some of the ways people begin.
Assessment Is a Process, Not a Verdict
I don’t expect you to tell me everything in the first session.
Why would you?
Trust develops. People remember things. Patterns become visible. Something that initially seems irrelevant can later turn out to matter.
We develop an initial formulation — a working understanding of where you are and what might help — and then test it against what actually happens in your life.
We review.
We notice what changes.
And if our original understanding doesn’t fit anymore, we change it.
Therapy shouldn’t become a conveyor belt where we decide in session one what the problem is and spend the remaining sessions proving ourselves right.
Ways We Can Work Together
I don’t believe everybody needs the same amount or type of support.
Some people need one substantial conversation.
Some benefit from a defined period of work.
Others want or need a longer therapeutic relationship while navigating something more complex. (all links at the end of the message )
Contact me for a initial FREE consultation Or dive in and book a:
Two-Hour Deep Dive
A focused two-hour session giving us enough time to put the wider situation on the table.
We can explore what is happening, what may be underneath it, what is consuming your energy, what is already working, what your priorities are and what your next steps might be. You may leave with enough clarity to continue independently. You may decide you would benefit from further sessions. Or we may identify another kind of support that would be more appropriate. There is no automatic commitment to continue.
Six Sessions
A defined period of work for people who want more than a single conversation. We agree an initial focus, explore what is happening in greater depth, introduce relevant approaches or tools, notice what happens between sessions and review our understanding as the work develops. At the end we review again. You may feel ready to continue independently, decide there is more you want to explore, or return at another stage of life.
Open-Ended Support
Some situations don’t fit neatly into six sessions. You may be dealing with several overlapping issues, a significant life transition, recovery from difficult experiences, leadership pressure, ongoing relational challenges or deeper questions about identity and how you want to live. Open-ended work gives us room to follow what emerges without imposing an artificial finishing point. But open-ended doesn’t mean unquestioned or indefinite.
We continue to review:
Is this still useful?
What has changed?
What do you need now?
Do you still need me?
Therapy should increase your agency, not replace it.
Choice Is Part of the Work
Many people who come to me have spent years adapting to other people, carrying responsibilities or putting their own needs somewhere near the bottom of the list.
Some have rarely been asked:
What do you want?
Others aren’t sure they’re “struggling enough” to justify therapy, feel guilty spending money or time on themselves, or think they should be able to sort everything out alone. You don’t have to prove that your problem is serious enough.
I can offer professional judgement, challenge you, help identify patterns or concerns and recommend additional or specialist support if needed (such as couple therapy)
The way therapy is offered shouldn’t contradict what we’re trying to develop through the therapy itself.
If we’re working towards greater agency, discernment and trust in your own judgement, those qualities need to be present in our work together too.
Experience Behind the Work
I bring more than 25 years of experience across mental health, counselling, psychotherapy, coaching, service development, leadership and wellbeing.
My professional career has included long-term work within Local Authority children’s mental health services, NHS England quality improvement, university-based NHS mental-health training programmes, programme leadership and private therapeutic and coaching practice.
I have worked across clinical services and wider systems involving mental health professionals, schools, Local Authorities, health services and other organisations supporting children, adults and families.
More recently my work has increasingly included adults navigating burnout, relationship difficulties, major life transitions, leadership pressures, identity, purpose and the question of what they want the next stage of their lives to look like.
My approach draws from person-centred psychotherapy alongside more than two decades of additional learning and practice across psychological approaches, coaching, NLP, hypnotherapy, emotional regulation, mindfulness and meditation.
I am also interested in the wider architecture of human wellbeing: how relationships, work, place, culture, opportunity, community, meaning and the environments we inhabit shape how we experience ourselves and our lives. I don’t believe any single psychological model explains a whole human being. Different approaches give us different maps. The task is discovering what is useful for you.
Not Sure Where to Begin?
You don’t need to arrive knowing whether you need therapy, coaching, practical change, deeper exploration or simply somewhere to make sense of what’s happening.
Working that out can be part of the work.
You can begin with a free 30-minute conversation, or book a Deep Dive if you already know you want time to explore things properly.
If we speak and I don’t think I’m the right person for what you need, I’ll tell you.
The goal is to help you understand where you are, what you need and what might help you take the next step — with as much choice, autonomy and agency as possible.
Current Offers
Instant access- within 24 hours for a one off 90 min session https://calendly.com/melgbb/fast-track-meeting
A free 30 minute consultation https://calendly.com/melgbb/50
A two hour deep dive https://calendly.com/melgbb/90-min-deep-dive-coaching
Kickstarter 3 x 90 min sessions in one month
A six or twelve week programme on a theme
For those who benefit from a longer-term space to reflect, grow and navigate life’s changing seasons.
