Deborah Mckay

Tuesdays 8am - 7pm 

Wednesdays 8am - 7pm 

Thursdays  8am - 7pm

Individual therapy in person or online £90 per 50 minute session

Couples/Relationship Therapy in person or online

£130 per 60 minute session 

£160 per 75 minute session

I'm Deborah a psychotherapist working with individuals and couples in Clapham, South London and online across the UK.  I trained at the internationally renowned Tavistock Relationships where I am also a visiting clinician.  I have a background in broadcast journalism and as a senior level communications advisor working internationally. 

I have a particular understanding of those working in high-pressure professional environments, where the demands of public life can make it harder to acknowledge or seek help with what is happening privately.  

I also have a special interest in how early experiences - particularly painful or difficult ones - can leave a lasting mark on how we relate to others in adult life, and how, with the right support, things can genuinely change.

I work with both individuals (16+) and with couples facing relationship difficulties.  I offer a warm, confidential and non-judgemental space where we can look together at issues that may be keeping you stuck or causing you distress.  Some people need focused, practical support with something specific that's happening now.  Others find it more useful to work longer-term and more deeply - to understand better how earlier experiences may still be quietly influencing how they feel and relate today.  I offer both. 

I work psychodynamically - which simply means that we work together to understand what lies beneath the surface, so that real and lasting change becomes possible.

One thing research consistently shows is that the relationship between therapist and client is one of the most powerful elements of effective therapy.  I take this seriously which is why I invite new clients to begin with three sessions - enough time for use both to get a sense of whether we're a good fit.

I work with a full range of issues from depression and anxiety to difficulties around body image, addiction or equally a painful sense that life has lost its meaning.

Before my clinical training, I spent many years as a broadcast journalist and communications advisor, working internationally. I learnt the quiet power of sitting alongside people and bearing witness, sometimes in the most challenging circumstances.  I also know how much life can ask of us and that the human capacity for transformation - for finding a different relationship with ourselves/our lives - is genuinely remarkable, and rarely as out of reach as it feels.

My practice is rooted in the psychodynamic tradition - a way of working that understands real change as something that happens from the inside out, within a therapeutic relationship that is safe, authentic and genuinely collaborative.

My style is warm and direct, and I work interactively - this is not a passive process.  I bring genuine curiosity to every person and every relationship I work with.

I work with a wide range of individuals and couples - including same sex couples, people navigating new relationships after divorce or bereavement, and couples trying to find their way back to each other after an affair or serious breakdown of trust.  I have a particular interest in attachment - in why we choose the partners we do, what we bring from our earliest relationships into our adult ones, and what becomes possible when those patterns are finally understood.

Individual sessions are 50 minutes; couples sessions run between 50 minutes and an hour and a half.  We meet at the same time and at the same place every week - a consistency that may sound like a small detail but is quietly central to the work itself.

I know that reaching out takes courage.  The free 15 minute consultation is a chance to ask questions and to get a sense of whether working together feels right with no obligation either way. 

Relationships - including therapeutic ones - need time to find their footing.  In our first sessions I will largely be listening: to your story, to what has brought you here, to the life that preceded this moment.  I am never in a hurry.  The work unfolds at your pace.

I'll want to know about your early world - your family of origin, your first attachments, the experiences that left their mark long before you were able to make sense of them.  Who loved you, and how.  Who wasn't there, or couldn't quite reach you. What you learned, early on about whether the world was safe and whether you were worthy of care. 

For couples, the early sessions have a different quality.  I am listening to both or you - but I'm also listening to what happens between you.  The dynamic that plays out in the room, often tells me a great deal about the dynamic that brings you to therapy.  Very often, what feels like a problem between two people turns out to be two histories colliding - and that understanding alone can begin to shift something. 

My role is not to take sides, to arbitrate or tell you what to do.  It is to help you hear each other - perhaps for the first time - and to find a way of being together that feels more honest, more spacious and more sustaining.