Mark Anderson

When I do, I would have capacity from Monday to Wednesday at various times between 8am to 8pm. If you need an earlier appointment, due to work or other commitments, please do ask as I may be able to accommodate.

I am a psychodynamic psychotherapist (BACP) and psychodynamic counsellor (BPC), qualified to Master of Science (MSc) level through a constituent training body of the University of London. As an adjunct to private practice, I teach first-year trainees on the MSc psychotherapy course at Birkbeck, University of London. I am also studying for a doctorate (Doctor of Clinical Practice and Research) at the University of Exeter. 

Previously, I worked on a pro bono basis with a London-based GP practice. For several years, I helped patients from many backgrounds, nationalities, ethnicities, religions, genders, and sexual orientations with the internal, and often unconscious, conflicts that had negatively impacted their emotional and mental well-being and prevented them from living their everyday lives to the fullest.

I now run a private practice based near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where I work with adults in person across Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.

I have an up-to-date enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service certificate, which I am happy to provide if you wish. I have regular clinical supervision with a BAPPS-certified psychotherapist and attend continuing professional development (CPD) courses to the required level.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy explores the capacity for a person’s unconscious to negatively impact conscious, everyday thoughts, emotions, and behaviour. What is understood, however, is that they don’t quite feel themselves, out of control, or that something indescribable is worrying them.Together, we’ll focus on the inner conflict preventing you from functioning. Sometimes, conflictive thoughts and feelings are connected to the present; often, they have their origin in our childhood experiences, our attachments, and the things we have come to believe about ourselves.For example, if you’ve ever severely procrastinated to the point that you get nothing done, you would be forgiven for thinking that you’re lazy, or unmotivated, or simply incapable of the task at hand. However, psychotherapists have long understood that procrastination can be a coping strategy against such things as the fear of failure, of rejection, and between the present self and the future self*. To break such punitive thinking, the psychodynamic approach is to explore the past and discover where such beliefs began.By gently exploring and bringing repressed emotions, avoided thoughts and ideas, and repeated patterns of behaviour into the conscious, we can hopefully identify the ‘interference’ in your feeling and thinking. And then, what you would like to do about it, if anything. As a modality, psychodynamic psychotherapy is non-directive, so my role is not to tell you what to do, but instead, I can help you feel more focused and in control of your emotional and mental well-being, understand how you relate to others and they to you, and so, allow you to make better choices.

* Reference: Pychyl, T. & Sirois, F. M. (2016). Chapter 8. Procrastination, Emotion Regulation and Well-Being, pp.163-188. United Kingdom: Academic Press (Elsevier)

When I receive an enquiry, the first two fifty-minute sessions act as an extended assessment, in which we explore the issues of concern you have, your current situation, and when comfortable to do so, your past. If I feel I can help and we agree to proceed, the therapy will then continue on a weekly basis, at the same time and in the same place.