Beginning therapy can be a very important step in finding the answers to the difficult questions we ask ourselves in life. These may concern anxiety, dissatisfaction, sex, love, meaningfulness or depression, but they will be unique and deeply personal to you. Many people find it difficult to talk about these concerns, these struggles, to anybody.
I work with adults who want to grapple with the difficulties they are experiencing in life. You might want to understand yourself and your behaviour better, create more satisfying relationships or feel more confident.
Relational Psychotherapy with Innes Meek
How I Work
Therapy can be daunting at first, but I try to offer a supportive, non-judgmental space where you can talk freely. My approach is relational, in that I will aim to build a meaningful relationship with you. You may wonder how it is that I think I can build a meaningful relationship with you, and indeed if we do build one, is it not contrived? My position is that people are always interesting, you are seeking help, and you have sought me out to help you. There may be times when something comes between us, I irritate you, or vice versa: My job as a relational psychotherapist is to pick up on these moments and confront them, discuss them, explore them – just as we will do with difficult issues in your personal life. This is what a relational approach means to me.
More formally, I work according to psychodynamic principles, alongside existential ideas around meaningfulness, identity and purpose. This means that we’ll look not just at your current difficulties, but also at the deeper patterns and past experiences that may be shaping them. We likely share many cultural interests – literature, sport, music, poetry, TV – and I will often draw from this shared cultural experience to illuminate issues in therapy.
I have particular experience in supporting men with issues such as intimacy, confidence, family life, and the pressures of dealing with those two imposters: triumph and disaster, but I work with all sexes across a wide range of concerns. Whether you’re struggling with relationships, stress, or a sense of not being good enough, therapy offers a chance to explore these feelings and create meaningful change.
Areas I Can Help With
Men’s issues and mental health: My first experience of psychotherapy as a client was broadly to do with “men’s issues” – an exceptionally, perhaps gratuitously, all-encompassing term but which for me included questions about success, bravado and identity. I grew up in a time where traditional male-female roles were changing, yet was also told that men had all the power, all of the advantages in life, and that men should feel guilty about this. I didn’t feel powerful or that I had taken advantage of the leg-ups given to me, which induced shame, on top of guilt. Whatever “men’s issues” are for you, it may help you feel comfortable talking to a male therapist who has experienced some of the same issues that you have.
Relationships and intimacy: Questions around relationships and intimacy can also elicit a lot of shame. It might be helpful for you to discuss these issues with a qualified therapist, especially if you are finding these issues overwhelming. I have worked with individuals at a specialist relationship therapy centre for three years and have seen the enormous benefits to clients in being able to talk about often taboo subjects, like love and sex.
Confidence and self-esteem: If you’re suffering from low self-esteem or lacking confidence, talking about it can put it into some context: Maybe things aren’t as bad as things seem, or perhaps through talking about what you’re going through you can figure out what the things are that make you feel good about yourself, and start doing them! Or even, ostensibly more painfully, consider what it might be like to be someone with low self-esteem? I lean on my integrative training to work with these issues. In Gestalt therapy there is an idea called the “paradoxical theory of change”, which suggests that we change through acceptance of how we are now. This is the paradox, and why it might be important to seek to confront and even accept our current circumstances.
Career pressures and work-related stress: My experience of starting training to become a therapist – after some time spent as a Samaritans listening volunteer – stemmed largely from dissatisfaction at my professional life. I almost certainly won’t encourage you to do what I did (commence a cripplingly expensive and lengthy career change) but I will encourage you to reflect on what you’re going through and seek to offer an empathetic and understanding ear. I have found that work and professional life is a particularly fertile area to explore existential ideas around freedom, isolation, meaninglessness and even – apologies if this sounds ominous – death. Therapy requires us to open our eyes, to be honest and brave and frank, to stare at the sun when it is painful to do so, but it can give enormous, liberating clarity to your life.
Parenting and family life: You may love your family and children and partner immensely, completely, but simultaneously desire to escape, to run away. Or perhaps you are totally consumed by your kids but feeling not so enamoured towards your partner. Parenting throws up many enormous challenges and emotions and can be on the one hand the most important thing in your life, whilst on the other something that you feel incapable of doing, and very little experience of. Raising children can be an excruciatingly intense period of your life when you have very little energy reserved for looking after yourself – therapy can give you some time and space to do this.
Addiction: Many of the above issues can compound addictions. As can experience of trauma and loss, or any number of life circumstances with which you are confronted. Indulging in your addiction(s) can lead to shame, to regret, to making yourself more removed from the people you care about. My approach is to seek to lift some of the shame and guilt you may have around your addictions. Instead of hiding away from it, I will seek to work with you to confront the addictions, to consider what you get from it and, perhaps, why you want to control it.
Training & Experience
Training & Experience I trained at Regent’s University London, where I completed an MA in Psychotherapy and Counselling and a Postgraduate Certificate in Psychotherapy. I’m accredited by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and a registered member of the BACP.
My background includes working in private practice, an NHS mental health trust, and a charity psychotherapy service in North London. Before becoming a therapist, I worked in commercial roles in the technology industry, which gives me an understanding of the pressures of professional life and the challenges of balancing work, relationships, and family.
What to Expect:
What to Expect When you get in touch I will offer a free initial call. On this call you can discuss your goals for therapy and ask me about the way I work. Should you choose to go ahead with therapy, we will find a suitable time to begin, after which sessions will be weekly and last for 50 minutes.
Contact
Please get in touch to arrange an initial call where we can discuss starting therapy together.
Rates:
£90 per 50-minute session
Sessions:
Psychotherapy sessions at City Therapy Space:
Wednesday:
