Relationships involve continually negotiating how close we allow another person to come. Intimacy asks us to let down some of our boundaries and defences, while still retaining a sense of ourselves as separate people with our own needs, wishes and choices.

You may find closeness difficult, worry about rejection or abandonment, lose a sense of yourself within relationships, or keep enough distance that it becomes difficult to feel known. Shame can also leave us fearing what might happen if another person sees parts of ourselves that we would rather keep hidden.

We can explore how you navigate closeness and separation, dependence and autonomy, and what you have come to expect from other people. Because therapy is itself a relationship, some of these questions may also become present between us.

Anxiety can leave us preoccupied with what might happen and whether we will be able to cope with it. You may find yourself anticipating different outcomes, avoiding situations that feel uncertain, or trying to gain control over something that cannot be predicted.

There may be good reasons why uncertainty has become particularly difficult to tolerate. At other times, anxiety can emerge around decisions, responsibility, or the possibility of making a choice we later regret.

We can explore what seems to be at stake when you feel anxious, alongside how you respond to uncertainty and the limits of what you can control.

Depression can affect how we experience ourselves, other people and the world around us. It may involve sadness, numbness, withdrawal or self criticism. Life can begin to feel narrowed, with fewer possibilities available and less sense of how things might change.

At times this can become a sense of despair. The future may feel closed off, or it may become difficult to imagine that anything we do could make a meaningful difference. We can become caught in ways of seeing ourselves and our circumstances that feel increasingly fixed.

Through dialogue, we might explore what has contributed to this narrowing, what has become difficult to express or pursue, and whether possibilities that have become difficult to see can gradually come back into view.

Difficult or overwhelming experiences can continue to affect us long after they have happened. This may become apparent in relationships, in how safe we feel with other people, or in the ways we have learned to protect ourselves.

Trauma can also change something more fundamental in how we experience the world. An experience that could not have been anticipated may disturb assumptions we previously took for granted, including that life is reasonably predictable or that certain things simply won’t happen to us. The world afterwards may not feel quite like the world that existed before.

Our experience of trauma is also shaped by what happens in relationship. This may concern harm that took place within a relationship, but also whether there was someone able to recognise what we were going through and stay alongside us when it happened. At its most profound, trauma can leave us feeling very alone with an experience that other people seem unable to understand.

Within the relationship between us, we can begin to approach that experience together and explore how it continues to shape your way of being in the world.

Our sense of who we are develops in relation to other people and the world we live in. Sexuality, gender, culture, class, disability, family and community can all contribute to how we understand ourselves and where we feel we belong.

You may be questioning aspects of your identity, trying to reconcile different parts of yourself, or finding that who you are doesn’t sit easily with expectations placed upon you. Questions of belonging can become particularly difficult when we feel that some parts of ourselves are more welcome than others.

Discrimination, marginalisation and inequality have real consequences for how we experience ourselves and other people. These wider realities are part of the context in which our difficulties are lived.

Sex and sexuality can be difficult to talk about, particularly where there is shame, uncertainty or a fear of being judged. You might want to explore intimacy or desire, your relationship with pornography or sexual behaviour, questions about your sexuality, or difficulties that are affecting your relationships.

Our sexual lives can bring us into contact with questions about closeness, vulnerability and how we relate to our own bodies and desires. You may also be exploring polyamory or other forms of consensual non-monogamy, and want somewhere to think about what this brings up for you and within your relationships.

Through talking about these experiences, we can become curious about the place that sex, sexuality and intimacy have in your life, and whether there is something you would like to understand or change.

Loss can take many forms. We may lose someone close to us, a relationship, a sense of home, a role we occupied, or a future we expected to have.

Some losses change the shape of our lives permanently. We cannot return to the person or the life that existed before they happened. Over time, grieving can involve finding ways to integrate what has been lost into a life that now has a different shape.

Change can also unsettle us when it is something we have chosen. Moving home, changing work, ageing, becoming a parent, ending a relationship or beginning a new stage of life can bring unexpected questions about who we are and how we want to live now.

You don’t necessarily need to be in crisis to come to therapy. You may have reached a point where you are questioning how you are living, what you want, or why a life that seems fine from the outside doesn’t feel satisfying to you.

We are living through significant social, political, technological and environmental change. Climate change, war, inequality and political instability can affect how we imagine the future and the choices we make about our own lives.

For some people this brings a strong sense of responsibility or commitment to a cause. Political activism and other forms of purposeful work can give life direction, while making it difficult to step away. Rest can bring guilt when there is always more that could be done.

There may be no reassuring answer to some of these concerns. Through dialogue, we might explore what you feel called to respond to, what you can realistically carry, and how to make room for your own life alongside the commitments you have chosen.