This specialist service is for couples with chronic illness, such as long-term health conditions, pain, acquired head injury, and neurological conditions such as MS, stroke and dementia.

You might have had differences earlier on in your relationship history that might be exacerbated as a consequence of chronic illness and contribute towards further distress, low mood, anxiety and anger.

Alternatively, you may be preparing for the next transition in your life as a couple, and need space to plan and manage this period; you may be planning a wedding, preparing for a baby, moving home or retiring.

This specialist service for couples with chronic illness is for you and your partner to be seen together to begin to work on acceptance and coping with change.

This service is based on a combination of two streams of treatments: neuropsychology & health psychology; and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Neuropsychology is a branch of clinical psychology specialising in brain-behaviour relationships and works to understand the impact of the neurological condition and ways to help manage cognitive difficulties, behavioural changes and psychological distress, to enable greater independence and improve quality of life and acceptance.

Health psychology thinks about the emotional and psychological aspects underlying health and illness and health care, and deals with the impact of these on the individual and their environment.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy focuses on the meaning of experiences and considers the underlying emotions behind particular states to play an important part in our experience of ourselves and of our relationships. It requires working at a deeper level, to understand underlying causes and why these might be problematic for you and your relationships, in order to bring about more long lasting change.

💡I have expertise in both these areas and combine them to offer a specialist service where your relationship can be understood in the context of a condition. In working together with you, I work towards helping you both adjust and accept the changes and live a meaningful life together.

This service involves carefully thinking about the changes, for both partners, understanding the impact of living with a chronic illness on intimacy, developing communication and establishing how you both would like your relationship to be. The ultimate aim is to help you to strengthen your relationship’s capacity to get through difficult times.

Understanding the impact of a condition for both partners is essential, and I draw on my specialist neuropsychology and health expertise to help you make sense of the cognitive, emotional and behavioural/personality changes. In creating space for you both, I specifically enable couples to develop understanding, communication and closeness. Sharing feelings and maintaining closeness at times of distress and need are vital when faced with uncertainty.

Strengthening your relationship resilience, by improving your capacity to use your relationship as a resource during critical difficult times, is central to my work.

I also consider areas of potential for you both: how this period can be seen as an opportunity for change that you can creatively work out together. This requires carrying out tasks, from communication exercises to care-behaviour techniques, and therefore, homework is to be expected.

We can use the first few weeks to decide whether a shorter or longer time span will be most helpful. If we decide to work longer-term then the contract will be open-ended and we will think about, and decide on, an ending, as the work progresses. It is important to make a planned rather than a sudden ending.

I offer psychological assessment and treatment at my consulting room which has full wheelchair access. The nearest station is Sutton, which also has good wheelchair accessibility.