Dr Malgorzata Milewicz

I’m Dr Malgorzata Milewicz, a Counselling Psychologist and Integrative Psychotherapist. I have been working psychotherapeutically for over 15 years. Much of my experience is working with people who function well in many areas of their lives but experience more difficulty in their relationships or inner lives.

You may struggle to move beyond dating, lose yourself once a relationship becomes important, or repeatedly find yourself hurt, disappointed or uncertain in relationships. You may want closeness but find that it becomes difficult once a relationship really matters.

Or you may be successful and capable, yet find it difficult to take much satisfaction in what you have achieved — pushing yourself relentlessly, feeling that you should always be doing better, or feeling that somehow, despite everything you have achieved, you have failed in life.

You may find feelings unsettling and have learnt that it is safer not to feel too much. Perhaps you learnt early in life — within your family, at boarding school or elsewhere — that you needed to be strong, self-reliant and just get on with things. Or perhaps you don’t feel very much at all and experience your feelings as distant, unreal or somehow not quite yours.

You may be very hard on yourself, judge your feelings as right or wrong, reasonable or unreasonable, or talk to yourself in a way you would never talk to a friend.

Perhaps you understand a great deal about yourself already. You know why you are the way you are and can recognise your patterns, yet understanding them hasn’t changed how you feel or what happens in your relationships.

I also work with people affected by trauma or difficult experiences in childhood or later in life; loneliness, isolation and emotional disconnection; grief after bereavement or other significant loss; relationship endings or being at a crossroads; affairs, betrayals or other breaches of the boundaries of a relationship; questions of identity and belonging; difficult family relationships; and significant changes in life.

How I work
I am not a blank-screen therapist. I work relationally and I’m present in the relationship as myself. I bring my expertise to the work, but my responses arise from my experience of you and of us working together. This can bring into view patterns that may also occur elsewhere in your life.

I’m interested in who you are: how you relate to yourself and other people, what you think and feel, what matters to you, how you came to be where you are, and whether the way you live and present yourself to the world reflects how you experience yourself privately.

I’m on your side, but that doesn’t mean I’ll always agree with you. At times I may draw your attention to places you’d rather not look, ask difficult questions or invite you to consider a perspective that is uncomfortable. I see this as part of thinking together rather than telling you who you are or what you should do.

My way of working draws on psychodynamic and attachment theories, neuroscience, trauma theory, embodied approaches and existential thinking. Together, these form a coherent framework for my work. Different aspects of this framework may come more to the foreground depending on your experience and what we are trying to understand together.

I also pay attention to the wider social and cultural contexts in which we live. They can support us, but they can also constrain, exclude or oppress us. Our difficulties cannot always be understood adequately by looking only at what is happening inside us.

Relationships
Relationships are a significant part of my work. You may be struggling to find a partner, repeatedly moving from one first date to another, or finding yourself drawn to relationships that you know are not good for you.

You may find it difficult to know what you need in a relationship or to ask for it. You may accommodate other people too readily, lose sight of yourself once you become close to someone, or find yourself pulling away when intimacy becomes important.

You may be trying to find a way forward after an affair or another breach of the boundaries of your relationship, grieving the end of an important relationship, or struggling with relationships with parents, siblings or other family members.

And loneliness does not necessarily mean being alone. You may have a partner, friends, colleagues and a busy life, yet feel that very few people really know you. Or you may feel isolated and wish you had more close relationships in your life.

Psychotherapy can help us understand what keeps these patterns in place and, over time, make it possible to relate to yourself and others differently.

Other difficulties
No profile can capture all the reasons someone might seek psychotherapy. If the difficulty that brings you here is not mentioned, you’re welcome to contact me to ask whether it is something we could work on together.

Starting therapy
If what you have read resonates with you, you’re welcome to contact me to arrange an initial consultation. A sentence or two about what brings you to therapy is enough at this stage.

The initial consultation is a standalone 50-minute meeting with no commitment to continue. It gives us both an opportunity to consider whether working together feels right.

Sessions are weekly and usually open-ended. I work with adults in English and Polish.