Jon Treanor

Everyone thinks you’re fine. You know you’re not.

Where do you go when nobody understands what it’s like? You can’t take it to the board. You can’t really take it home either. Your friends think you’ve got it made, and on paper you have. So you carry it on your own, and you wear the mask so well that even you start to believe it.

I know that place because I lived there. I spent years in senior roles at Sony, MGM/UA, Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios. Back then they called it executive stress. For me it meant one drink too many most nights and a constant, quiet fear that I wasn’t good enough. That one day someone would see through me, and I’d lose the role and everything that came with it.

I went to my GP more than once. Some of what was on offer took the edge off. None of it reached what was really going on.

By the end I was disillusioned and running on empty. The package was huge and I was frightened of losing it. But I was far more frightened of what would happen to me if I stayed. Leaving was the best thing I ever did. It took me back to study, through years of training, and eventually here.

The fears have new names now. Imposter syndrome. The worry that the next restructure, or the next wave of AI, will make your role disappear. Underneath, it’s the same question I used to lie awake with... am I enough, and what happens when they find out?

Almost everyone who contacts me has the same thing underneath. Fear, and a feeling of being lost. For some, therapy is a last resort. Some have tried it before and it didn’t help. Some think the whole thing is nonsense. You’re all welcome. The sceptics often do very well.

I’m a transpersonal psychotherapist. In plain terms, I’m interested in the whole of you, including the bigger questions about meaning and direction that tend to surface when life gets hard. I’m curious about people and I’ll be straight with you. You’re the expert on your own life. My job is to help you hear yourself.

A lot of the men I see are in senior or C-suite roles. Many have never been to therapy and part of them is suspicious of it. That’s fair enough. There’s no jargon here and nobody is going to tell you what’s wrong with you. What you get is a confidential space with someone who knows how your world works, where you can finally think out loud.

I also work with many women who want a male therapist and need to know he’s safe. Some have spent their careers being talked over or not quite believed. Some have never had a man simply listen without wanting something back. I’ll listen. Properly. What women often tell me is how refreshing it is to feel seen and valued as a person, sometimes for the first time in years.

I’ve seen most of the ways people try to cope. A few drinks every night to switch off. Antidepressants from the GP, which can help, though they’re rarely the whole answer. Cocaine to keep going. Gambling, or working harder until there’s nothing left. None of that makes you weak or a bad person. Usually it means you’ve carried too much for too long with nobody to talk to. Whatever you’re using to get through, you can bring it into the room.

There’s no silver bullet here and no quick pill. If you want someone to tell you how wonderful you are every week, I’m not the right therapist for you. I don’t fix people. I help them fix themselves. It takes longer, and it lasts.

You may have come here looking for the right therapist. The person you’re really looking for is you.

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I keep my practice deliberately small. I work with around ten people at any one time, so when you’re with me, I’m not rushing off to the next person.

All my sessions are on Zoom or Teams. I practised for many years in London, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. These days I live on a boat in the Greek islands, which still surprises me some mornings. It’s a long way from the boardroom, and it’s living proof to me that a life can change. I work to UK hours. And online, nobody sees you walking into a therapist’s office.

Every client begins with six sessions I call Foundations. I’m not trying to fix anything in this phase. I want to understand your whole life, where you’ve come from and what’s really going on underneath. At the end we sit down and look at it honestly together. Do you want to carry on, and am I the right person for you? You decide. Either answer is fine.

If you commit to the six Foundations sessions you get 10% off, and you still pay one session at a time.

My fees are clear from the start, and so are the boundaries of our work. Everything you tell me stays confidential within the limits set by the BACP Ethical Framework, and I’ll explain exactly what those are before we begin. I have regular supervision, as every BACP member does.

Because my practice is small I don’t always have a space straight away. If I don’t, I’ll tell you honestly how long the wait is likely to be, or help you find someone else.

Before anything else, we have a free 30-minute call. Just a conversation, with no obligation. You can ask me anything you like about how I work, and I’ll get a sense of what you’re carrying. You’ll know fairly quickly whether I’m someone you can talk to.

There’s no assessment form to fill in and no checklist of symptoms. Our first proper session is simply the start of Foundations. I’ll want to hear about your life as you see it, in your own words and at your own pace. You don’t need to have it worked out or know where to start. Most people don’t.

After that first session I’ll send you something small to reflect on before we meet again. It might be a question to sit with or a short grounding practice. It isn’t homework. People underestimate the time between sessions, and a lot of the real work happens there.

If some of this sounds familiar, get in touch and we’ll talk.