Couples therapy in Angel Islington

My Angel practice is on City Road, between Angel and Old Street, in one of the busiest and most connected parts of north central London. The couples who come to this room are a genuinely mixed group: young professionals in their late twenties and early thirties, couples in their thirties and forties working in marketing, research, design, tech, and creative roles, and a steady stream of couples who live in Islington, Hackney, Shoreditch, and the wider stretch of north and east London. Many work in the City but live north of the river, and Angel is the natural meeting point.

What tends to draw couples here is partly the location: it’s quick to get to from Old Street, King’s Cross, and the Northern line, and easy to slot a session into the working week. But it’s also the kind of room couples often choose when they want therapy to feel modern and unfussy rather than formal.

What tends to bring couples to the Angel room

Compared with my other practice rooms, the work in Angel often happens at an earlier stage of the relationship. Many of the couples I see here have not done therapy before, are not yet sure whether they will stay together, and are facing a decision rather than untangling decades of pattern. Some of the most common themes:

• Deciding whether to commit. Couples who have been together a year, two years, sometimes longer, and are circling questions about moving in, exclusivity, or where the relationship is actually going. Therapy here is often about getting clearer on what each of you wants rather than fixing what’s broken.

• Early cohabitation and the shock of living together. The transition from dating to living together is one of the most underestimated in adult life. Sharing space, money, family time, and domestic labour brings differences to the surface that didn’t show up before. Many couples come within the first year of moving in together.

• Pre-marital and engagement-stage work. Couples thinking about marriage, recently engaged, or planning a wedding who want to use the run-up to do some honest work on the relationship rather than only the logistics. This is some of the most useful therapy I do, because patterns set early are much easier to shift than patterns set over twenty years.

• Whether to have children. Differences in timing, differences in certainty, navigating fertility uncertainty, or one partner wanting children and the other not. These are conversations couples often avoid until they can’t, and the room is a good place to actually have them.

• Communication that has started to feel stuck. Couples who notice the same arguments returning, who feel they’re not really listening to each other, or who have stopped being honest in small ways. Often the relationship isn’t in crisis, it’s drifting, and they want to catch it early.

• Sex, desire, and intimacy. Differences in libido, the impact of stress and overwork on closeness, navigating sexual fit, or working out together what an honest sexual relationship looks like for the two of you.

• Considering separating. Couples uncertain about the relationship’s future, who want a clear-eyed process to figure out where they stand rather than a decision made in the heat of an argument.

Most couples arrive with some mix of these. The work is not about labelling what’s wrong, it’s about understanding the pattern between the two of you and helping you do something different inside it.

How I work

I am an integrative psychotherapist. With couples, the influences I draw on most are Imago Relationship Therapy, emotionally focused therapy, attachment theory, and systemic thinking. In plain terms: I am interested in what each of you is actually feeling underneath what you are saying, in how your earlier experiences of love and family shaped what you each bring into the relationship now, and in the pattern the two of you have built between you, often without realising it.

Sessions are 50 minutes. The first few sessions tend to be about getting a clear picture of what’s happening: hearing each of you, mapping the recurring dynamic, understanding the history. From there the work becomes more active. I will name what I see between you, slow down arguments as they happen in the room, and give each of you a chance to be heard in a way that has often stopped being possible at home.

Many of the couples who come to Angel have never done therapy before, individually or together. If that’s you, you don’t need to arrive with a clean account of what’s wrong, or with the right vocabulary, or even with both of you fully on board. It is fine to come uncertain. The first session is a place to start working it out.

I do not take sides, and I am not a referee. I will, when it helps, push back on both of you. Couples therapy works best when both partners feel the therapist is honest with them, including when that is uncomfortable.

I work with couples across the spectrum, including straight, gay, and queer couples, non-monogamous and polyamorous couples, and intercultural couples. I am particularly conscious of the ways that identity, culture, and orientation shape relational life, and I welcome couples for whom this matters.

What to expect from the first session

The first session is a 50-minute meeting where we get to know each other. You’ll each have time to say what brings you in, in your own words. I’ll ask questions to begin understanding the pattern. We are not trying to solve anything in the first session. The aim is to leave with a clearer sense of what you each want from therapy and whether working with me feels like the right fit.

After the first session, most couples book weekly or fortnightly. Some couples do a short, focused piece of work around a specific decision or transition. Others stay longer for deeper relational work. There is no fixed length of treatment. We review as we go.

Fees

Couples therapy sessions in Angel are £120 for 50 minutes.

About me

'I am a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist (MBACP Accred) and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist. I run Rise and Grow Therapy UK as a private practice, with rooms in Angel, Pimlico, and Kensington. My specialism is relationships, intimacy, and desire.

BACP Accreditation is the highest level of membership offered by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, awarded to therapists who have demonstrated substantial post-qualification clinical experience and competence.