Melanie McGrath:
Trainee Integrative Psychotherapist (BACP & UKCP student member)
I’m Melanie McGrath and I’m a trainee integrative psychotherapist working in the low-cost therapy service at HQ Therapy Rooms in Haggerston, Hackney, London E8. I am currently seeing clients face to face.
I understand that deciding to come into therapy might be one of the hardest decisions you make. It can feel daunting and take a lot of courage, which is why we will work gently together to explore whatever you want to gain from therapy. Our time together is confidential. I’m not here to judge or to decide what is important to you. We begin with whatever you bring.
My training at the Minster Centre in London is integrative, which means I am able to draw on a series of different types of therapy modality approaches to create a safe, empathic, and non-judgmental space tailored to your goals and needs. If you are not sure what these are, we will work towards discovering them.
Coming to therapy can feel like the start of a journey. I will meet you where you are and stay alongside you for the duration, however long or short that turns out to be. We will only ever work at your pace and in a way that feels right for you, led by what you wish to gain from coming into therapy.
My work for three decades as a writer, novelist, and teacher has given me a deep curiosity about how we can change the unhelpful stories we tell about ourselves and develop a more compassionate, authentic, and fulfilling narrative for our lives. I see our sessions together as co-creating, working together to help you recognise unhelpful patterns and gradually make the changes you need to grow and move forward in your life.
I have worked with vulnerable people in prisons and other institutional settings from many different cultures and backgrounds and I have decades of experience mentoring people to achieve their creative and personal goals.
I have personal and/or professional experience with anxiety and depression, financial insecurity and homelessness, relationship problems, domestic violence, self-harm, eating disorders, identity issues, chronic mental and physical illness, dementia, divorce, infertility, and menopause. Whatever you bring, we will explore it together in a safe, confidential, holding environment.
I have practiced mindfulness meditation for twenty-five years and have an interest in the ways we can better connect to our bodies and integrate our minds and bodies to develop into our full potential as human beings. My therapeutic approach is based on the idea that it is only by becoming whole persons that we experience healing. While the body can hold trauma and distress, it can also be a source of wisdom and growth.
