Pimlico · online by video, with the Hove room for occasional sessions
Psychotherapy for Pimlico
Psychotherapy is for the pattern you keep meeting again, whether you live on a Cubitt square or in a Churchill Gardens flat: the same argument, the same retreat, the same Sunday dread. The only room is in Hove, 93 minutes' drive from Pimlico, so this longer work normally runs as a weekly video hour, with an in-person session now and then.
The practical facts for Pimlico
- Where sessions happen
- A private room at Intergen House, 65-67 Western Road, Hove BN3 2JQ, or secure video.
- From Pimlico by car
- About 93 minutes with clear roads (52.5 miles); longer at busy times.
- Free NHS talking therapy
- Westminster Talking Therapies, 030 3333 0000
- Fees
- £80 for 60 minutes, £100 for 90, £120 for 120. The first 15-minute call is free.
- Registration
- BACP registered member, no. 109340 (check the register); UKCP student member in advanced psychotherapy training.
A district laid out in repeating terraces
Thomas Cubitt planned Pimlico as a grid, and you can still feel it walking from Warwick Square to St George's Square: the same cream stucco, the same porches, terrace after terrace, kept that way by the conservation area.
A life can settle into a similar shape. Working close to Parliament, or at the National Audit Office on Buckingham Palace Road, rewards a calm and reliable surface, and a calm surface can sit over the same disappointment for years. A few streets south, Churchill Gardens holds 1,600 homes in 32 blocks, beside the Lillington and Longmoore Gardens estates, so the childhood you carry may look nothing like the adult life you have built on top of it. On Millbank, Tate Britain rewards whoever stands in front of one painting long enough for new detail to appear. Psychotherapy asks for a similar patience: a repeated, unhurried look at the same picture of your life.
Months rather than weeks: the shape of the work from SW1
Shorter counselling usually aims at one problem. Psychotherapy follows the thread running underneath several of them. In the early sessions you describe what keeps coming round, perhaps a pull towards people who leave, a temper with your own children that seems to arrive from nowhere, or a habit of working until nothing is left of the evening, and together we trace where it seems to begin. The household you grew up in matters here, along with the roles you were handed young. Over the following months we start to catch the pattern as it happens, during the week and now and then while we are talking, and that is often when there is room to choose differently. One method I draw on is Internal Family Systems, useful when part of you wants change and another part stands guard against it. There is no fixed end point; we review the work together every few months, and you decide when it has done enough. My registration is with the BACP, and I hold student membership of the UKCP, alongside more than 25 years of practice and lived experience of recovery, so slow and uncomfortable material can be given the time it needs.
Where Pimlico patterns show themselves
A role beside Parliament
When work near Westminster or at the National Audit Office becomes the whole of who you are, psychotherapy asks what the role protects and what it has crowded out.
Two Pimlicos in one life
Growing up in Churchill Gardens or on the Lillington and Longmoore Gardens estates, then living very differently a few streets away, can leave old loyalties unspoken. Longer work has room for both.
Monday workshops, weekly therapy
Recovery and Wellbeing College workshops at Hope in the Community Westminster, held on Mondays at the Gordon Hospital, can run alongside a longer piece of psychotherapy with me.
Hove for the longer sessions
A direct Southern train from Victoria makes an occasional 90-minute or two-hour session in the Hove room realistic, while the weekly rhythm stays on video.
Free and low-cost support for Pimlico
If what you want first is a shorter, structured course for anxiety or low mood, Westminster Talking Therapies accepts self-referrals on 030 3333 0000. Hope in the Community Westminster at the Gordon Hospital offers a non-clinical wellbeing space, and Carers Network supports unpaid carers. Longer private psychotherapy can sit beside any of them, or follow on once a short course has finished.
- Free NHS talking therapyWestminster Talking Therapies030 3333 0000Free NHS talking therapy for anxiety, low mood and related difficulties. You can refer yourself, with no GP referral needed.
- If drinking or drug use is part of itTurning Point Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea (Drug and Alcohol Wellbeing Service, DAWS)0330 303 8080Free and confidential.
- Local organisationCentral London Samaritans
- Local organisationGamCare drop-in at Hope in the Community Westminster
- Local organisationAge UK Westminster: Fit4Life Exercise Pimlico and Hope in the Community Social
- Local organisationEncouragement Through the Arts and Talking (ETAT)
For gambling, the National Gambling Helpline is free, day or night, on 0808 8020 133 (NHS gambling support).
If someone at home is hurting, threatening or controlling you, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline is free, day or night, on 0808 2000 247.
If you need urgent help now
If you need help right now, please don't wait for a session.
Locally, the CNWL Mental Health Single Point of Access is on 0800 0234 650.
What people in Pimlico ask before starting
How long would psychotherapy from Pimlico last, and when could it start?
Psychotherapy from Pimlico has no predetermined length. Open-ended work often runs for several months and can go past a year, and we pause to review it at regular points. To begin, book a short introductory call. Should you decide to carry on afterwards, I name the weekly times genuinely open in my diary, and we fix a first video session from those.
Should I try Westminster Talking Therapies before private psychotherapy?
That depends on what you are carrying. Westminster Talking Therapies, run by CNWL, offers free, shorter courses aimed at anxiety and low mood; self-referral is on 030 3333 0000. If the same pattern has come back through several relationships or jobs, open-ended psychotherapy may fit better. You can also use both, one after the other or at the same time.
Does psychotherapy really work over video from a Pimlico flat?
It works well with a private room, headphones if the walls are thin, and the same slot every week. Depth comes from regularity and attention far more than from the furniture. Should sharing a room feel important, Hove is one Victoria line stop and one direct Southern train away, so an occasional longer session there is realistic.
The Gordon Hospital wards were temporarily closed. Where do I turn if things get much worse?
The inpatient wards at the Gordon Hospital in Pimlico were temporarily closed, and the NHS consulted on acute care for Westminster from October 2023 to February 2024. Urgent help is still there: the CNWL 24/7 crisis line on 0800 0234 650, Samaritans on 116 123, or 999 in an emergency. You will find all three in the urgent help box on this page, and as the work goes on we can map out together what carries you through rougher stretches.
How much do sessions cost, and is the first call free?
Sessions are £80 for 60 minutes, £100 for 90 minutes and £120 for 120 minutes, the same in person in Hove or by video. The first 15-minute call is free, with no obligation to book. There is no NHS referral needed to see me privately.
Look at the pattern with someone, from Pimlico
When you feel ready, a short conversation is the easiest way to see whether we are a good fit. There is no obligation.