manu mahal

I work to help you navigate the full human experience: relationships, attachment, loss, identity, the experience of living between cultures, questions of meaning and existence. I aim to help you understand: what is happening to you, why it might be happening, and what you can do when we bring what is hidden into the light.

While drawing on several methods, I predominantly work with ISTDP. We curiously follow what is important to you, at a pace that feels right. We look not just at what is happening on the surface, but at what lies beneath: the patterns that repeat across your life, the feelings that are difficult to reach, the moments when you feel too much or when you feel nothing.

Through better understanding, change can emerge. As the problems crystallise in the sessions, it allows us to work on them together.

ISTDP is an emotion-focused form of psychotherapy. The central idea is that psychological problems arise from learned defences we use to manage difficult feelings, patterns that often develop in early relationships, leaving us afraid of our own emotions and organising life around avoiding them rather than living it.

In ISTDP, therapist and patient work actively together to explore which defences are getting in the way. As they ease, anxiety often emerges, and learning to tolerate that is a central part of the work, making room for the feelings that lie beneath.