The lamp room
An armchair deep enough to lean back in, a wool throw you’re welcome to use, and the lamp that gives this practice its evening light.
Aldermead Therapy · Evenings by lamplight
You’ve been meaning totalk to someone.
Not because something is broken — because carrying it alone has stopped working. Aldermead is a two-room psychology practice built around one idea: starting should be the easy part.
No referral needed. Evening appointments most weeks.
Tuesday · 6:10 pm
The lamp is on. Your chair is the one by the window.
The First Session
What actually happens
The hardest part of therapy is the week before it. So here is the whole first session, walked through in order — no mystery, no test to pass.
I
Arriving
Two quiet rooms, one flight up, a door that closes properly. You can arrive early — the kettle is usually already on, and nobody minds if you take a minute before you knock.
The window room
A window seat over a quiet street, an olive tree doing its best, and dusk arriving on schedule around six.
II
Talking
Fifty minutes. You start wherever you can — the middle is fine. Nell asks the kind of questions that make the next sentence easier, and takes exactly as many notes as you’re comfortable watching her take.
6
days — the typical wait between writing to us and sitting down for a first session.
III
The work
Evidence-based methods, chosen for you rather than applied to you — and every one of them explained in plain English before we use it.
- Cognitive behavioural therapy
- Noticing the thought patterns that push you around — and loosening their grip.
- Acceptance & commitment therapy
- Making room for hard feelings while you keep moving toward the things that matter.
- EMDR
- A structured way of taking the charge out of memories that won’t file themselves away.
- Schema therapy
- Finding the old rules you learned early, and renegotiating the ones that stopped serving you.
IV
Continuing
Most people come weekly at first, then stretch the gaps out as things steady. Fees are on the table from the first conversation — literally, just below.
Fit call · 15 minutes
A short phone call to see whether we’re the right match. No forms first.
Free
First session · 60 minutes
A longer first hour, so nothing has to be rushed.
$160
Ongoing sessions · 50 minutes
Weekly or fortnightly — whatever rhythm the work asks for.
$140
If your health plan covers psychology, every receipt is formatted for claiming — check your plan’s rules. Cancellations need 48 hours’ notice; genuine emergencies are always the exception.
The person across from you
Nell Aldermead
Clinical psychologist · practising since 2009
Warm, direct, and allergic to jargon. Nell built Aldermead after a decade in hospital and community clinics, because fifty unhurried minutes in a lamplit room turned out to be the thing that actually worked.
On starting, from people who did
“I spent twenty minutes in the car outside, the first time. Nell mentioned later that lots of people do. That helped more than I can explain.”
“I thought I had to arrive with a summary of myself. I didn’t. We just started in the middle.”
Shared with written permission and lightly edited for privacy.
What I don’t work with
Aldermead isn’t the right place for court-ordered assessments, acute psychiatric crisis, or children under sixteen. If that’s you or yours, I’ll say so at the fit call — and point you somewhere genuinely better, with names.
The first session is just a conversation.
No preparation, no summary of yourself required. The lamp will be on either way.
Book it