Katie Merritt

Under this weight, it can feel as though you’re living by someone else’s standards, disconnected from your body and sense of self.

Or perhaps you’re moving through a sudden crisis, a bereavement, relationship breakdown, identity questions, or a life transition and the ground beneath you feels uncertain.

Therapy offers a space to pause, breathe, and step out of the noise. A place where the stories, sensations, and emotions that shape your life can be explored with care and attention.

Sessions are collaborative and compassionate, always moving at your pace. Some weeks we may explore recurring patterns or family dynamics; others may simply offer space to reflect and feel. There is no agenda and no performance, just a shared exploration of what it means to be fully human.

In this space, you have the opportunity to be heard and understood in your complexity, not defined or reduced, but seen through a multi-coloured lens. We make room for individuality, embodiment, and the connection between mind and body.

What Therapy Is Like

Healing isn’t a straight line it’s a messy, brave, beautiful path back to yourself.

Therapy is meaningful work. At times it can be challenging, but it is shared work, held within a safe and confidential relationship grounded in empathy and curiosity. As understanding grows, so too can resilience, clarity, and self-compassion.

Together, we attend not only to your words, but also to tone, pace, body sensations, images, and metaphors, the quieter, non-verbal ways your story may show itself.

This isn’t therapy as quick fix. It is a space that honours nuance and the fullness of human experience, allowing your process to unfold at your own rhythm, with gentleness and depth.

Many people find that having a dedicated space to talk and reflect becomes both an act of self-care and a source of healing. Therapy can support you to:

• feel more grounded and connected
• understand patterns and relationships
• reduce anxiety and overwhelm
• navigate life transitions
• strengthen your sense of self
• relate to others with greater confidence

Integrated Psychotherapy with Katie

Therapy has the capacity to be deeply transformative. The process of understanding and healing our inner wounds can be liberating and life-changing, opening space for greater freedom, connection, and authenticity.

I am an integrative psychotherapist because one size does not fit all, and I find that drawing from different modalities allows me to find reflectivity offering a nonjudgemental, reflective, and attuned space for individuality where your thoughts, feelings, and experiences can be explored safely. Psychodynamic work explores how past experiences influence present emotions and relationships. Person-centred therapy emphasises empathy, authenticity, and growth in the here and now. Creative and embodied approaches draw on metaphor, imagination, and bodily awareness to express what words alone cannot. We can delve in to the past and your lived experience or we can focus on a particular issue, we go at your pace, working collaboratively to explore.

My practice is queer-affirming, kink-positive, and anti-oppressive. I welcome the complexity of identity, culture, and relationship diversity, acknowledging the wider systems that shape our lives while remaining closely attuned to your individual experience.

My Specialisms:

Occupational Burnout & High-Pressure Careers

Burnout, chronic stress, and the emotional toll of demanding or high-pressure work environments can become an ever-present force. You may feel exhausted, disconnected, or caught between external expectations and your own needs. Together, we can explore the impact of work on identity, self-worth, and meaning, and reconnect with your limits, values, and a more sustainable way of living and working.

Societal Pressure, Inequality & Cultural Identity

Living within unequal or marginalising systems, particularly within individualistic Western cultures, can evoke complex feelings such as anger, shame, grief, or a sense of not fully belonging anywhere. In therapy, these experiences can be explored from your personal perspective while also acknowledging the wider systemic inequalities that shape them.

Female Rage & Reclaiming Voice

Many women and those socialised as female have learned to suppress anger or turn it inward as anxiety, guilt, or self-criticism. Yet anger often carries vital information about boundaries, injustice, and unmet needs. Therapy offers space to explore and reclaim female rage as a meaningful and valid emotional experience, supporting voice, selftrust, and more authentic expression.

LGBTQIA+ Community

As a queer woman (she/her), I frequently work with people across the LGBTQIA+ community. Therapy may explore sexuality, identity, relationships, family dynamics, minority stress, or belonging, or simply offer a space where your experience is understood without explanation, and met with support and compassion.

Sex-Positive: Kink & Fetish

I provide kink-aware, sex-positive therapy for individuals and partners within BDSM, fetish, and power-exchange dynamics. Your desires and practices are welcomed without judgement or pathologisation. Therapy may explore identity, shame, boundaries, consent, communication, or relational meaning in a space where you do not need to educate your therapist.

Non-Monogamy, Polyamory & Relationship Diversity

I work with individuals and partners in polyamory, open relationships, and other forms of consensual non-monogamy. Therapy can support the navigation of jealousy, attachment, communication, boundaries, and social stigma, while recognising diverse relationship structures as valid and meaningful. This is a space where relationship diversity is understood and respected.

Anxiety, Overwhelm & Self-Doubt

Anxiety can show up as persistent worry, overthinking, tension, imposter feelings, or a constant sense of pressure or threat. Together, we gently explore what underlies anxious experience, patterns, fears, and past experiences, while building greater understanding, self-compassion, and steadiness in both mind and body.

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Areas I Work With at a Glance

I work with people experiencing a wide range of difficulties. You don’t need to identify with everything on this list, but these are some of the experiences people often bring.

• Anxiety, panic, and chronic tension
• Low mood, emptiness, and loss of motivation
• Burnout, perfectionism, and imposter feelings
• High-pressure or demanding environments
• Relationship, attachment, and intimacy difficulties
• Sexuality, gender identity, and belonging
• Kink, fetish, and diverse sexual interests
• Shame, secrecy, and fear of judgement around desire or identity
• Non-monogamy, polyamory, and alternative relationship structures
• Family dynamics and intergenerational patterns
• Betrayal and loss of trust
• Grief, bereavement, and other forms of loss
• Life transitions, including career change, relocation, separation, and parenthood
• Trauma, post-traumatic stress, and their longer-term impact
• Suicidal thoughts, intrusive fears, or feeling unable to cope
• Harsh self-criticism, shame, and low confidence
• Body image and self-esteem concerns
• Changes in appetite, body image, or sense of self linked to medication or eating patterns
• Compulsive or addictive patterns
• Mind–body connection, embodiment, and emotional awareness
• Questions of meaning, freedom, authenticity, and identity
• Cross-cultural identity

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Psychotherapy Qualifications, Training & Background:

• Training: PGDip (Level 7) in Psychotherapy and Counselling with Gender, Sex and Relationship Diversity (GSRD) accreditation
• Membership: Registered member of the BACP (MBACP)
• Background: MA in Theatre, informing my relational, embodied approach
• Community: Co-founder of Queer Spaces, an organisation dedicated to therapeutic environments within the queer community

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Contact

I offer a free 15-minute initial phone or online call, where we can talk briefly about what you’re looking for and whether working together feels like a good fit.

If we decide to go ahead, our first session will be a paid assessment session.

Rates:

£75 per 50-minute session on an ongoing basis, with a mutually agreed ending. A small number of reduced-rate spaces are available, please get in touch if you require this.

Sessions:

In-person sessions at City Therapy Space on Wednesday
Online sessions on Monday and Friday

Please note that the Chancery Lane rooms are not wheelchair accessible, but online sessions are available. I’m happy to discuss any adjustments to ensure you feel fully supported.

Directions to City Therapy Space