Victoria Heath

I work both in-person in West London, and online over Zoom during the week, including some weekday evenings. I don't see clients at the weekend.

Hello, my name is Victoria and I'm a humanistic psychotherapist. That means that I believe in hope. I firmly believe that everyone can make changes to help them feel better, and live a happier, more fulfilled life.

The core of my practice is about offering kindness, honesty and reliability to my clients, so that together we can connect in a safe, trusting and secure space. Here, we can explore, collaboratively, what brings you to therapy. I am interested in looking at the link between the past and the present; how the past affects your ways of feeling, relating and behaving out there in the world today. By developing deeper self-understanding and self-compassion, we can look to the future with greater choice.

Lastly, but importantly, it's a great privilege to sit with my clients, listen to their story with care, and work together as a team towards change.

I've worked with clients from different backgrounds, ages and cultures and with many different challenging experiences, examples being anxiety, feelings of being lost and alone, trauma, domestic violence, bereavement and low self-esteem. Every client is unique. As such, I know that some clients like sessions to be quite structured, and others less so, wanting an exploratory space to see where our conversations take us. There is no right or wrong; together we will discuss what feels right to you.

As we sit together in our early sessions, we begin to develop a connection between us, the formation of which is a very important part of our work together. It's really important that you feel safe and secure; that there is a trustful connection between us and that you feel heard and not judged as we start to talk about your reasons for coming to therapy. At the core of my practice is careful listening and the offering of kindness, honesty and reliability in service to our relationship.

As we continue together, we begin to look in depth at your challenges out in the world. My general approach is to guide you to access and explore deep feelings and where they come from, in order to develop greater awareness and self-understanding. This can then help you to come to terms with why you are struggling and can open up the possibility of healing and change. Sometimes this can be really painful as difficult emotions and experiences get stirred up; I am here to be with you when this happens; you are not alone.

Together we can identify and address unhelpful and deep-seated beliefs from the past and how these link to ways of feeling, behaving and relating that cause you problems now. We can go on to develop self-compassion, acceptance and new strategies; different, helpful ways of being for the future.

Our first session involves begins with gathering some factual information like where you live and your date of birth. We will have a look at my contract, to make sure that you know about practical issues such as booking and cancelling sessions, and important aspects about therapy like confidentiality. You can tell me about any questions or concerns you have about therapy and how I work. We will go on to talk about what has brought you to therapy at this time, and if you have any expectations, hopes and fears about the process.