01
The first ten minutes
Tea, the chair, and landing. We pick up wherever last week left off — or wherever this week insists on starting.
How I work
Fifty minutes, no script.
How sessions at Aldermead actually run — the shape of the hour, the methods behind it, the fees in full, and the questions everyone wants to ask but usually doesn’t.
The shape of the hour
02
The middle
The real work: sometimes structured and on the whiteboard of a notebook page, sometimes just the two of us following a thread until it goes somewhere true.
03
The last five
We land the plane on purpose. What we touched, what to notice during the week, and when we’ll pick it up again. You leave with a next step, not a cliffhanger.
The approaches, in plain English
Four evidence-based methods sit behind the conversation. Which one we lean on depends on what you bring — and you’ll always know which is in play, and why.
Cognitive behavioural therapy
Noticing the thought patterns that push you around — and loosening their grip.
Strongest for anxiety that overplans, moods that spiral on a schedule, and the 3am committee of worst-case scenarios.
Acceptance & commitment therapy
Making room for hard feelings while you keep moving toward the things that matter.
Strongest when the feelings won’t be argued with — grief, chronic illness, the season after a diagnosis.
EMDR
A structured way of taking the charge out of memories that won’t file themselves away.
Strongest for single-incident trauma and the memories that still arrive uninvited, years later.
Schema therapy
Finding the old rules you learned early, and renegotiating the ones that stopped serving you.
Strongest for the patterns that follow you between jobs and relationships — the ones that pre-date all of them.
Your first session, minute by minute
Minutes 0–10
Names, tea, and the shortest possible version of the paperwork. You don’t owe the whole story in the first ten minutes — or ever, all at once.
Minutes 10–45
You talk, Nell listens — properly. Expect questions about what’s prompting this now, what’s already been tried, and what a good outcome would look like from your side of the room.
The last stretch
An honest read-back: what Nell heard, how she’d suggest working, and roughly how long it might take. Then the only decision that matters — whether you want a second session.
Fees & practicalities
Printed here because hunting for a price is its own small stress, and you have enough of those.
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.
Who I work best with
Adults and older teens, sixteen up. Anxiety that overachieves. Burnout wearing a competence costume. Grief, including the complicated kind. The season after a diagnosis, and the long weather of ordinary sadness. If you recognise yourself in a sentence up there, we’ll probably work well together.
And honestly, who I don’t
Court-ordered assessments, acute psychiatric crisis, and children under sixteen all deserve specialists — not a generalist doing her polite best. Ask at the fit call and you’ll leave with actual names, not a brush-off.
You can ask this
- Do I need a referral?
- No. A referral can open up cover under some health plans, but the door works without one.
- What if I cry, or go completely blank?
- Both happen most weeks, in both rooms. There are tissues within reach of every chair, and silence is a normal part of the work — not a failure of it.
- How long will I need to come?
- Honestly: it depends, and anyone who quotes a number before meeting you is selling something. You’ll get Nell’s working estimate at the end of the first session, and it gets revisited out loud.
- Is it confidential?
- Yes, with the standard legal exceptions — immediate risk to you or someone else. Those limits get explained in plain words in the first ten minutes, not buried in a form.
- What if it’s not working?
- Say so — Nell will raise it too if she sees it first. Sometimes that means changing approach; sometimes it means a warm handover to someone better matched. Both count as the process working.