Luke Row

I didn't come to psychotherapy through a tidy academic route. I came to it because my own life fell apart, and putting it back together meant confronting things I had spent years avoiding. That process of rebuilding, slow and uncomfortable as it was, is what convinced me this work matters.

For a long time I was very good at appearing fine. I managed other people's feelings, kept myself hidden behind what felt like a workable version of who I was supposed to be, and carried on until I couldn't. When that arrangement finally collapsed, it was thorough. There was no pretending it hadn't happened.

What I discovered in the aftermath, first as someone in therapy and later as a practitioner, is that the defences we build to survive early life tend to outlive their usefulness. They become the very things that keep us stuck. Understanding that, not just intellectually but in the body and in relationship, changed everything for me.

I trained at the University of Greenwich and have been practising as a psychodynamic therapist for over a decade. I work with individuals and couples, and I bring a directness to the work that my clients tend to value. I am not interested in polite conversation. I am interested in what is actually going on.

I believe therapists should know what it is like to sit in the other chair. I have done that work myself, and I continue to do it. That is not a footnote to my practice. It is central to it.

I work psychodynamically. That means I am less interested in symptoms and more interested in patterns, particularly the ones you developed early in life that now shape how you relate to others, how you cope under pressure, and what you do when closeness feels threatening.

Sessions are weekly, 50 minutes, at the same time each week. That regularity is not just scheduling. It creates a reliable space, and reliability is what allows people to bring the things they have not been able to say elsewhere.

I will not give you worksheets or techniques. What we do instead is talk honestly about what is happening in your life, in your relationships, and between us in the room. The difficulties that show up in your life outside will eventually show up in the therapy too. That is not a problem. That is where the real work begins.

I keep my caseload deliberately small so that I can give each person and each couple proper attention. I maintain clear boundaries, and I am in regular clinical supervision, because this work demands accountability.

I trained at the University of Greenwich on a BACP-accredited psychodynamic programme. I am registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and maintain ongoing clinical supervision as part of my commitment to ethical, accountable practice.

I am currently training in couples psychotherapy at Tavistock Relationships, the leading centre for this work in the UK. Couples therapy requires a particular kind of attention: you have to hold two people's unconscious patterns at once and understand how they interact. That training has deepened the way I work with individuals as well as couples.

I hold a trainee membership of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) through the Tavistock Relationships programme.

I am in my own psychoanalytic psychotherapy three times a week. I do not ask anyone to undertake work that I am not willing to do myself, and I consider my own therapy an essential part of my professional practice.