ÌÇÐĹÙÍø

Monday: out-of-office

Tuesday: 9am-1pm (in-person in Shawlands)

Tuesday: 3pm-5pm (online)

Wednesday: 8.30am-12pm (in-person on Victoria Road)

Wednesday: 4pm-9pm (in-person in Glasgow City)

Thursday: 5pm-10pm (in-person on Victoria Road)

Friday: 11.30am-7pm (in-person in Shawlands)

Saturday: out-of-office

Sunday: out-of-office

A bit about me:

If you're feeling anxious and overwhelmed, or you're struggling with your self-esteem, your inner critic, or relationships, then you might be in the right place. My name is Vanya and I am an accredited Cognitive Behavioural and Group Therapist. Although rooted in CBT theory, my approach is integrative, which means that I also use knowledge and skills from other main psychotherapeutic theories, mainly compassion-focused, person-centred, and psychodynamic.

I know it can take a lot of effort to even read this far, and reaching out can feel daunting - I’ve been there myself. I struggled for a long time before asking for help, and when I finally did, it changed my life. So much so that I decided to become a therapist, to support others through their own difficulties.

In me, you’ll find a real person first, and a therapist second. I believe it’s important to be genuine, accepting, empathetic, and warm, so you can feel comfortable and safe exploring what’s been bothering you. I bring my personality into sessions, and I hope to see yours too. I try to keep the tone casual, creating a space that feels like a meaningful conversation with someone who genuinely cares about hearing your story.

Our first sessions would focus on building a safe therapeutic relationship, where we can work together to come up with goals, specific to your unique needs at this time, and to help you live your life more authentically and in line with your values. We’ll check in regularly to make sure the work feels helpful and is moving in the direction you hoped for.

I offer in-person and online video therapy and I work with people in the southside of Glasgow, in the city centre, or anywhere else in the UK. If you would like to find out more, you're welcome to book a free 10-minute introductory call or drop me an email on help2cope@outlook.com and we can arrange a session. This will give us an opportunity to hear more about each other and see if we are a suitable fit.

I have a compassion-focussed approach and specialise in anxiety, maladaptive perfectionism, low self-esteem, assertiveness, and boundaries. I also have a degree in comparative literature and a soft spot for linguistics. This ties in well with my work in the area of self-criticism and challenging unhelpful thinking as CBT research has found that the way we speak to ourselves, the way we word our thoughts, often has a significant impact on how we feel and behave.

I am accredited by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (ÌÇÐĹÙÍø) and I am registered on their Professional Standards Authority Accredited Register. This ensures that I work to the highest standard and practice in line with the ethical code of conduct. The therapeutic interventions I use are recommended by the National Institute for Health Care and Excellence (NICE) and supported by scientific research. This is because it's important to keep you safe in our work. By incorporating these proven techniques into your individually tailored therapy plan, we can effectively address your concerns and work towards sustainable positive change.

Throughout my career, I have worked in student counselling, stepped-care models through NHS England Talking Therapies/IAPT, community counselling, and I have been running a successful small private practice since 2023. Before becoming a therapist, I worked in client-facing roles in Higher Education and in the Third Sector, so I also draw from my experience in student support and charity work.

The first session is an opportunity to get to know you better. I use a mix of an informal conversation and validated questionnaires to support this. 

I have found that it is crucial to have a good understanding of not only how problems are affecting you now, but also where they started and why they haven't resolved themselves. Understanding your early experiences and the environment where you learned how to think and how to cope with difficulty is likely to give us an insight into what your beliefs are and how to move forward. We would take it one day at a time, at the pace that is manageable for you. 

If you do not wish to discuss the past, then this is entirely up to you and we can certainly only focus on the present. From a CBT point, we would focus on figuring out what ways of thinking, what beliefs, and what behaviours are no longer helpful for you. Gaining awareness of this will help us to start making small changes in your way of thinking and acting, which will then show us more about how life might be if these changes were to stay. 

There is no right or wrong way to be in therapy and my role is not to judge or assess you (even though you may hear the word 'assessment' being used in relation to checking in on how you're doing and what's been bothering you). My role also isn't to 'fix' or 'cure' you. I do not subscribe to pathologising human experience - in other words, there is nothing to 'fix' as there is nothing 'wrong' or 'broken' in the first place. Therapy is about learning how to manage your difficulties better, understanding what makes them worse, and making some intentional changes in your life to help you be in a better headspace. You will know yourself best and I will be there to support you while you find the answers you may have been missing. Therapy is, above all else, a space to explore, be curious, and consider accepting yourself, others, and the world. Therein lies recovery.