Malise Hartley

I offer an active, engaged form of psychotherapy for people who want to understand themselves more deeply and live with greater honesty and freedom.

My work is integrative, with strong existential, psychodynamic, Jungian, transpersonal and somatic influences. I am interested not only in what has happened to you, but in how you are living now: where you feel most yourself, where you adapt or hide, what feels essential to you, and what gets in the way of being real with other people.

I work particularly well with thoughtful people with rich inner lives, and with those with creative minds. I also enjoy working with people whose minds move quickly or non-linearly, including many clients with ADHD. I am particularly interested in the parts of people that have not fitted comfortably with what others expected them to be.

I also work with trauma, anxiety, anger, identity and questions of meaning.

Dreams, imagery, bodily sensations, creativity and spiritual or uncanny experiences can all have a place in the work if they matter to you. I take these experiences seriously without imposing a belief system or fixed interpretation on them.

I pay close attention to what happens in the body and in the relationship between us. Often, change involves not only insight but noticing patterns of tension, defence and withdrawal as they happen, and discovering that they can let go.

Therapy with me is conversational, direct and collaborative. I do not sit silently and expect you to produce all the material. I will ask questions, offer thoughts, notice patterns, challenge you when useful, and expect you to tell me when I have misunderstood something.

The relationship matters more to me than allegiance to any single therapeutic school. Good therapy requires honesty, engagement, humour when appropriate, and enough freedom for disagreement. I am interested in whether you can become more fully yourself rather than more adapted to what other people expect of you.

Some clients want focused work around a particular problem; others stay longer and use therapy as a place to think about their life, relationships, creativity and direction. With writers and other creative people, therapy sometimes develops naturally into discussion of the work itself, particularly where the creative material and the person's inner life overlap.

I may draw on dreamwork, imagery, body awareness, existential enquiry, psychodynamic thinking or other approaches depending on what is useful. I do not assume that dreams, synchronicities or spiritual experiences have one correct meaning. We can explore them without turning them into doctrine.

I am a Registered Member of BACP (MBACP) and a UKCP registered psychotherapist.

The first session is a chance for both of us to find out whether we can work well together.

I will want to understand what has brought you to therapy, what you hope might change, and what has or has not helped before. I am also interested in how it feels for us to talk together. A good therapeutic match matters, and I would rather establish that honestly than persuade you to continue.

There is no special assessment process and I do not expect you to arrive with a polished account of yourself. We can begin wherever the pressure is greatest or wherever your attention naturally goes.

I will usually give you some sense of how I am understanding what you describe, and you are welcome to question or correct me from the beginning. If we decide to continue, we can agree whether the work is likely to be focused and short-term or more open-ended.