Helen Hans

I have a therapy room on Hamlet Court Road in Westcliff where I work with clients face to face from Monday to Wednesday. On Thursdays, I have a room just of the Broadway in Leigh-on-Sea for face to face sessions. On Fridays I hold therapy sessions over the phone or via video call.

I aim to be flexible in the way that therapy sessions are organised in order to help my clients  as much as possible. Sometimes a mixture of video call and face to face sessions suits people best.

Hello, I’m Helen and I’m a psychodynamic psychotherapist working with adults of all ages, adolescents, primary school aged children and parents together with their babies or pre-school aged little ones.

My practice is based on the principle that it's OK to admit you're not OK. Seeking help is a courageous thing to do because it so often goes against the grain for us to admit we're struggling. Many people find they can get the support they need from family and friends, but sometimes it's easier to talk to someone who’s outside your usual circle – someone who’s one step removed from the situation. As a psychotherapist, I can offer you support when you’re finding things difficult.

Together we can explore the roots of your difficult feelings and work to improve your mental health as well as your relationships with those around you. I can provide you with the time and space to talk about whatever you want, without judgement – just empathy and understanding.

My aim is simply to give you a regular, confidential space once a week for 50 minutes to reflect on, think through and begin to make sense of what’s behind your current struggles. 50 minutes where you are the sole focus, without any other distraction or purpose. Your deeper understanding of the roots of your feelings will help to change them. 

I trained as a psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman Clinic and at the School of Infant Mental Health in London and I provide psychotherapy services with psychodynamic principles at their heart.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a talking therapy. It aims to help you explore the unconscious links between your past experiences and current difficulties with a particular focus on early relationships in childhood. As these relationships are so enormously influential, reflecting on them can bring new understanding and new insights to current problems.

You may simply be seeking a little guidance and may only need a few sessions to feel the benefits of talking therapy, but you can continue for as long you wish. While therapies usually work best in person, we can hold sessions via voice or video call according to circumstances or geography, or if you would just prefer that. At times, speaking from your own home may feel like all you can manage and that is perfectly acceptable. 

Therapists work in different ways and it’s important to find one who suits you, your child or your family. For this reason, I view the first session as an opportunity for us to get a sense of whether we would work well together and whether my approach suits you. If you feel that my way of working does suit you, we can agree a regular day and time for us to meet each week. 

In work with primary school aged children, I prefer to have at least two sessions with the parent/carer to get a full history before holding any sessions with the child.