The work
The work I do is relational and focused on pattern. I don't run intake checklists. I don't assign homework. I pay attention to what happens in the session. The moments when something shifts or goes flat. The pattern that keeps showing up underneath the problem. Most people already know their own story. They still keep landing in the same place. What's missing is someone watching in real time, someone who can name what you cannot see from inside it. More on how I work, and how I work with couples.
The arrangement
I am a US-trained psychodynamic therapist working online and privately. Off-island, and outside every local system. No insurance billing. No diagnosis. No clinical record. No link to anyone in your industry or community. You pay directly. The time difference is small, so an evening session lines up easily. We start with a free 15-minute call.
What people bring to online therapy
The people I work with in English come for a wide range of reasons: anxiety, depression, stress and burnout, anger management, grief and loss, relationship difficulties, loneliness, self-esteem issues, procrastination, sleep problems, attachment patterns, self-sabotage, perfectionism, identity questions, and existential concerns. Online counseling makes this work possible from wherever you are, whether you need an English-speaking therapist, a virtual counselor, or simply someone who can work in your language at a depth that matters.
How it works
Sessions are online via secure video call. I work with individuals and couples (60 minutes). Before your first session, we have a free 15-minute call to see if this feels like the right fit for you.
What I see from the Islands
The texture belongs to a wealthy, beautiful, very small place. Small is the load-bearing word. The trust and fund-administration professional. The private banker, often moved over from the UK with the family in tow. The incomer-versus-islander tension that never fully settles. The closed-in feeling underneath the scenery. There is no privacy to be had. Everyone knows whose car is parked where. And everyone is loosely accountable to everyone. And the strain people carry precisely because they cannot be seen carrying it. The work with me never touches the island. The drinking. The marriage. The pressure of a high-stakes role in a place with nowhere to take any of it.
Two islands, two systems, one shared gap
Neither Jersey nor Guernsey is part of the NHS, and their talking-therapy routes work differently from each other. Jersey Talking Therapies is free for adults, but you cannot refer yourself: it takes a referral from a GP or another health professional, which means the request goes through the local system before the first session happens. Guernsey's equivalent, Healthy Minds, does take online self-referrals, and it is free, but it is built as short-term help for mild to moderate anxiety and depression.
Both services do what they are designed to do. Neither is designed for open-ended, character-level work, and neither can offer what many finance professionals on the islands quietly want most: a therapist with no connection to the island at all.
That is the arrangement here. No referral request sitting in an island system, no island file, no professional who also knows your colleagues. Just direct, private work from off-island, on a schedule that fits around market hours.
Why off-island matters here
The Channel Islands run a dense, interconnected finance industry, trust, fund administration, private banking, inside communities small enough that the social and the professional overlap almost completely. Local mental-health depth provision is limited, and just as importantly it is not anonymous: the therapist you might see could be at the same dinner, the same school gate, the same client. For a lot of people that ends the conversation before it starts.
Working with me solves the specific island problem. I am entirely off-island, with no connection to the local industry or social web, and there is no record of any kind.
Questions people ask from the Channel Islands
Selected research on this approach
My work is psychodynamic and depth-oriented. These are some of the studies on the effectiveness of that kind of therapy. They describe research on the method in general, and are not claims about any individual outcome.
- Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98-109. doi:10.1037/a0018378
- Steinert, C., Munder, T., Rabung, S., Hoyer, J., & Leichsenring, F. (2017). Psychodynamic therapy: as efficacious as other empirically supported treatments? A meta-analysis testing equivalence of outcomes. American Journal of Psychiatry, 174(10), 943-953. PMID 28541091
The full reading list is on the approach page.