Dr Benjamin Roux

I am a Psychotherapist, with over twelve years' experience and, offer a private, strictly confidential, and non-judgemental service.

In my practice, I treat established conditions, such as depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. I also work with less defined relational issues and repetitive destructive behaviours - tendencies that prevent connection or intimacy, and behaviours that sabotage desired outcomes.  

Psychotherapy focuses on the individual's experience and, highlights those experiences, that for various reasons, remain largely unexpressed or unacknowledged. This may be because they are painful, frightening, overwhelming, shameful, or simply seen as wrong. 

Having an integrative training, my practice is informed by multiple modalities, including CBT approaches. The core is however psychodynamic, which for me centres on three primary areas. The first is loss, which may concern death, but more often refers to areas of loss within relationships – loss of care, respect, support, consideration, desire, etc. The second is trauma, and although loss can certainly be experienced as traumatic, trauma emphasises an element of violation which may not be present in loss. It describes experiences which breach or break the 'usual order of things'; brutal or frightening experiences which have little place within our conception of the world or within the world as it is seen by society generally. These two areas refer to an injury. Psychotherapy cannot change the fact that it happened. It instead works with the third area of focus, the response to injury. How did one adapt in order to be able to live with loss and trauma, and might there be other ways of doing so? Ones which are perhaps less costly – less destructive and painful? These are ingrained patterns – defence mechanisms and modes of coping – that we are hardly aware of. We notice them only indirectly from the evidence of our stumbling. Clearly something is wrong, but it is hard to say what or why exactly. Some questions you might be asking are: Why am I stuck in this situation? Why does the same thing always seem to happen to me? Why can I no longer function properly, or as I would like to? Why do I do this thing? Why do I treat people in this way? Why can’t I grieve? What are these feelings about? Why do I feel nothing? Why am I so overwhelmed by anxiety, anger, sorrow?

 What I ultimately try to achieve with therapy, is to leave you with a sense of agency and empowerment, so that you are better positioned, to determine your life, in ways that are important to you.   

I have practised at multiple psychotherapy organizations across London, working with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, trauma, physical and sexual abuse, addiction, compulsive and obsessive behaviour, and bereavement which I have a great deal of experience with. These issues all feature ongoingly in my private practice, and an additional growing area has been eating disorders. One specific area of interest I have, is the repetition of trauma and loss in relationships.

Beginning therapy can be intimidating. In my experience however, the first session is generally felt to be a relief. The first meeting is an assessment session, where you tell me about yourself and your reasons for coming, and it is also crucially about deciding whether you feel we can work together – do you feel comfortable, might therapy be beneficial to you, and if so, in what ways?

I am happy to answer any questions or queries so do feel free to contact me in this regard, or to discuss setting up an initial appointment. Please also see my website for further information.

£90 per session. I do also have a limited number of concessionary slots at reduced rates.