Laiqa Ahmad
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This professional is accepting new clients but may have a waitlist. Please enquire with them directly to discuss availability.
This professional is accepting new clients but may have a waitlist. Please enquire with them directly to discuss availability.
About me
People who find their way to me are often highly introspective. They have read the books, done the journalling, perhaps they even felt “too self-aware” in previous therapy, and yet still find themselves caught in familiar patterns.
They may be living with chronic anxiety, relational exhaustion, or a quiet grief about the state of the world alongside more intimate losses. Some are navigating loss of agency, difficulty with boundaries, deep isolation, or the persistent feeling of not quite fitting anywhere.
Perhaps they have spent years feeling like "too much" - too sensitive, too intense, too easily overwhelmed by what others seem to move through effortlessly. If they identify as highly sensitive or neurodivergent, they may have learnt how to mask, modulate, or manage a nervous system that was never disordered - only finely tuned, in a world that was not built for it.
Others are exploring questions of sexuality and gender, attachment, meaning and purpose, or the cumulative strain of living under intersecting crises - institutionalised patriarchy, racial capitalism, ecological collapse, ongoing genocides.
Many carry wounds that did not begin with them. Ancestral grief. Transgenerational trauma. The residue of displacement, colonial violence, interrupted lineages of knowing. These live in the body and in patterns of relating, often long before language arrives.
You do not need fixing. You need space to feel, to grieve, to think, and to rest - without being asked to harden, shrink, mask or perform.
Contact me: here or visit www.redpsychotherapy.com to find out more.
My Experience
I began my clinical training at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic - a time that exposed what many already knew: psychological pain is not a personal failure. It is shaped by who we are, where we come from, what systems we live inside, and what those systems have taken from us. As a Kashmiri East Londoner, this has never been abstract for me, it is the ground I stand on.
I founded Red Psychotherapy after a decade of working as a researcher, designer, and facilitator in radical, creative, and community-led spaces. Therapy felt like a continuation of that work - another way of tending to the communities I care about and to the conditions that shape their suffering and experiences.
My clinical work spans NHS acute and secondary community mental health services, hospice care, and specialist services for marginalised communities. I work as an embodied and relational therapist, attending not only to narrative but to what happens in the body, the nervous system, and the space between us. Therapy is collaborative and paced; we work with patterns as they emerge in real time - especially attachment, our internal parts, and survival strategies that once made sense and may no longer serve.
I have often worked at the edges of society with complex trauma, exile and displacement, suicidality and self-harm, structural violence, chronic illness and disability, grief and bereavements, and long-term relational wounds. My work is grounded in steady relational presence with experiences that are layered, embodied, and often difficult to put in words.
My approach
My approach is grounded in an ethic of care that resists punitive, pathologising, and carceral logics. I understand distress as shaped by power - by race, gender, class, disability, migration, and the histories we inherit - drawing from critical race theory, queer and trans studies, disability justice and Mad studies, and Marxist-feminist analyses of care and harm.
At the heart of my practice is re-indigenisation - a return to relational, ancestral, and communal ways of healing that Eurocentric, individualised models of care have long displaced. These frameworks are not abstract positions for me; they shape how I listen, how I understand suffering, and how we imagine change together. Because of this, I particularly welcome:
- Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, and diasporic communities
- LGBTQIA+ communities, particularly QTIPOC+, trans, and non-binary people
- Neurodivergent, chronically ill, Disabled, and Mad people
- Migrants, refugees, and those navigating asylum systems
- People impacted by poverty, precarity, or housing insecurity
- Carers, including young carers and those parentified early
- Those harmed by psychiatric, medical, or carceral systems
- Creatives, activists, and those engaged in emotionally demanding work
Training, qualifications & experience
I am a Qualified Integrative Therapist and a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy[MBACP]. I trained at the Minster Centre, where I completed my Diploma in Counselling, and am currently finalising my MA in Integrative Psychotherapy and Counselling. UKCP accreditation as an Integrative Psychotherapist will follow on completion of my dissertation this year.
My training sits within an integrative tradition, meaning I have trained across a range of therapeutic modalities and approaches rather than a single model. These include contemporary relational psychoanalysis, attachment theory, internal family systems and parts work, somatic and body-based therapies, trauma-conscious neuroscience, transpersonal and existential approaches, and nervous system-informed practice and epigenetics research.
Before training as a therapist, I spent over a decade working as a researcher, designer, and facilitator in radical, social-justice informed creative spaces. My clinical experience spans the NHS, community mental health, hospice care, and specialist services for marginalised communities. This includes five years as manager of CNWL Arts in Health at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, a community-based mental health service for people living with complex trauma and enduring mental health histories.
Alongside this, I have provided psychotherapy at the Rainbow Suicide Prevention Clinic for trans and non-binary young people of colour, facilitated support groups for QTIPOC+ refugees and asylum seekers through Mind Islington, offered long-term psychotherapy with FLINTA* communities in North West London, and provided bereavement therapy at St Joseph's Hospice in Hackney.
Member organisations
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred). Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision. Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training. All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Therapies offered
Fees
£50.00 - £90.00
Concessions offered for
Additional information
Red Psychotherapy uses a tiered pricing structure to support fairer access to therapy, recognising that financial security and access to mental health support are shaped by wider social and economic inequalities. Our fees are guided by both access needs and a commitment to redistribution:
Please note: Spaces at lower fee tiers are limited and when a tier is full, we will offer the nearest reduced rate we can sustain.
When I work
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Further information
I offer open-ended therapy to adults aged 18+. Some people come with a specific issue they want to work on; others use therapy as a longer-term space to reflect, process, and better understand themselves and their relationships. Sessions are shaped by what you bring and what feels most useful at different points in time.
Before we begin, I offer a free 15-20 minute phone or video call so you can share a little of what's going on, ask any questions, and get a sense of whether we feel like a good fit. Assessment usually takes one to two sessions, and I recommend starting with at least ten sessions, with regular check-ins every five to ten sessions to review together.
All sessions are fifty minutes. I offer in-person sessions at four locations - The Twelfth House and Wood St Offices in Walthamstow, and The Minster Centre and Paddington Offices in North West London - as well as online sessions through Konfidens, a GDPR compliant and ICO registered secure platform.
