Tara Anderssen

Participating in your own life is what is most empowering. There is no better time to invest in yourself than now.

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Are life's challenges getting on top of you? Is there something about your life you really want to change but don’t know how? My bespoke one-to-one sessions are tailored to each client’s individual needs. The therapy I offer can help with: 

Anxiety, Stress, Fear, and Panic attacks

Depression, Despair, feeling stuck, and the Management of painful feelings

Grief, Bereavement, and Loss

Childhood abuse, Sexual, Physical, Emotional, and Institutional abuse

Trauma, PTSD, Dissociation and Personality Disorders 

Self-esteem, Confidence, Shame, and feeling 'not enough'

Relationships, Work and Family conflicts

This list is not an exhaustive one, so please get in touch if you are experiencing other difficulties. Please also take a look at my website, or read on.

A bit of Background: I am an Integrative, Holistic, and Transpersonal psychotherapist and counsellor. I have been working in private practice and in the voluntary sector since 2003. I am a registered member of BACP and UKCP. I work online, and have a private practice in Kingston upon Thames and Hampton Hill providing in-person sessions for individuals/adults, and counselling students around a wide range of issues.

What I'm like as a therapist: I bring all of me into my work. I care deeply about my clients and the situations they are struggling with without judgement. My training and experiences enable me to foster and maintain deep and sustained emotional contact, and a supportive relationship that empowers and embraces difference and diversity. You will be welcomed in your individual diversity, race, class, gender, neurodiversity, and spiritual/religious/sexual orientation in a respectful and professional way. I believe that to truly transform our lives in a lasting way, we need to engage from the roots. For some clients working in depth, including with soul-loss, brings a way of accessing a deeper wisdom and reconnecting with parts of themselves that have fragmented, been disowned, or frozen in time. The approaches I use facilitate the exploration of the underlying, repressed, and unconscious patterns that may have been directing your life, and influencing your thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and relationships beneath your conscious awareness. Rediscovering these split-off parts can bring a sense of wholeness.

My Approach: I bring to my work a unique alchemy by using a broad range of therapeutic approaches, which means that I seek to develop a way of working with you which is especially tailored for you, in order to facilitate the transformation you yearn for. The approaches I draw from I draw especially from Humanistic, Relational, Psychodynamic, Existential, Jungian, Archetypal and Transpersonal approaches, In Psychoanalytic work the emphasis is on how past patterns repeat themselves, and also can transform themselves, in the present. Existential and Jungian approaches offer specific methods to relieve the manifestations of particular difficulties. Transpersonal practice draws from that creative renewal for living, through the exploration of dreams, myths, creative mediums and imagination to address issues about ‘way of life’, which can have a surprising impact on specific life difficulties. Or, we may explore transpersonal matters such as meaning, calling, soul, ecology and the more-than-personal. Integrative psychotherapy draws from the wisdom of the psyche and its creative and integrative functions to widen perspective, release feeling, to address deep-rooted emotional concerns, to increase self-awareness, and to open doors to new life possibilities. Today, I bring these experiences and approaches together in an eclectic approach to a healing practice.

How Therapy Can Help: Throughout the years, I have seen how working with a therapist can be especially helpful in terms of having a positive relationship with another person who really listens, is sensitive to our needs, and to the issues that we face in life and in today's society. Being truly seen, heard and valued by another is often a rare occurrence. This is especially true for those of us who had difficult family relationships in childhood. 

You might think that you just have to learn to communicate better or be less 'this way' and more 'that way', or you may convince yourself that you should be able to stay connected by sheer will power, or a change in behaviour, but in reality, these coping strategies leave us feeling empty. The work of healing requires human connection and genuine care, that is why this work is so creative  and profound for both the client and therapist. something happens in therapy that would not happen if you were talking to a friend or considering things by yourself, so whatever your reasons are for coming to therapy; I am here to support you, and hold a space for you in a way that allows you to get in touch with the the healing potential and the compassion within you. A space where you can connect with your wholeness and your longing to live, fully alive and fully awake.

Life transitions, support for the end of life, spiritual crisis and emergence, post-trauma resilience, soul loss and loss of meaning, and institutional abuse.

I offer online sessions, face-to-face sessions, and telephone sessions. The sessions are 50 minutes long. Online and telephone sessions are £60 per session, and face-to-face sessions are £75 per session. I have a limited number of concessions for those on low-income and for students (Online and telephone sessions only); please contact me to enquire about availability.

I offer a free 15-minute telephone appointment. Feel free to arrange an introductory telephone session if you have any questions about counselling.

Please contact me by email or by telephone if you would like to arrange an initial assessment session, during which time, we can explore your reasons for coming to therapy, as well as exploring how we can best work together. This enables you to see whether therapy can be beneficial.

I work from private offices located in Kingston upon Thames and Hampton Hill. I work with clients from the surrounding Surbiton, Norbiton, Richmond, Sheen, Wandsworth, Twickenham and Putney areas.  

I offer a free 15-minute telephone appointment. Feel free to arrange an introductory telephone session if you have any questions.

Please contact me by email or by telephone if you would like to arrange an initial assessment session, during which time, we can explore the issues you are struggling with, your reasons for coming to therapy, your hopes and fears, as well as exploring how we can best work together.  This enables you to see whether therapy can be beneficial.

I offer weekly sessions on an open-ended basis. Depending on your needs and circumstances, we can assess the length and frequency of sessions together.