About
Lawyer & Counsellor
"Thirteen years as a commercial lawyer taught me what it means to achieve everything you're supposed to—while feeling increasingly disconnected from yourself."
Background
For thirteen years, I have worked as a commercial lawyer, founding my own virtual firm in 2019. My work involves managing high-stakes situations and being the one people depend on when everything falls apart—often working with executives, senior government officials, and leaders in for-purpose organisations.
Through this lens, I witness what happens to capable people under sustained pressure. I see the fracture that occurs when you try to maintain composure while your internal system is overtaxed.
Traditional support often misses the specific complexity of this experience—the toll of being the one who cannot fail. When support systems fail to meet people where they actually are, resilience becomes impossible to build.
I saw a gap: support for high-achievers who've become so skilled at performing competence that they've lost access to their genuine selves.
After completing my Diploma in Counselling in 2025 and training with Ground Up Psychotherapy, I built this practice to offer what I see is missing—informed by more than a decade working with leaders managing sustained pressure and complexity.
Have we worked together at Dwellaw?
I maintain a strict separation between my legal practice and my counselling work. To ensure the integrity of both roles, I do not provide counselling to current or former legal clients. Please contact me through the firm directly so I can provide you with a personal referral to someone I trust.
How Sessions Work
This isn't traditional talk therapy
Most of my clients have already analysed why they are the way they are. They're insightful people who can articulate their patterns clearly. What's been missing is the ability to actually feel what they've been thinking about for years.
Sessions focus on present-moment experience. We pay attention to what's happening in your body—where you tense, where you disconnect, where you've learned to override yourself to stay functional.
It is a process of unlearning the performance of competence.
"The pace is slower than you're used to. It is a space to land, moving past the cycle of intellectual insight and into the work that can allow a fundamental shift."
What Makes This Different
Genuine emotional safety—not as a concept, but as a felt experience
This is likely the first space in your life where you do not have to perform competence.
You don't have to explain yourself well, stay composed, or make visible progress. There is no pressure to be insightful.
For those who have spent their lives being the responsible one, this is a place to finally stop.
"Everything you have been trying to move toward only becomes accessible once you have somewhere to land. The shift begins at the stopping."