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.
Nell Aldermead · Clinical psychologist · practising since 2009
The person across from you.
Therapy runs on the fit between two particular people, not on a brand. So here is the particular person — credentials in plain speech, rooms included.
Credentials, translated
- Registered clinical psychologist — the protected, regulated title — since 2009. LIC. 000000.
- Master of Clinical Psychology, with formal training in CBT, ACT, EMDR and schema therapy. Every acronym gets a plain-English gloss on the How I Work page.
- A decade in hospital and community mental health teams before opening Aldermead in 2019.
- In monthly clinical supervision — every good therapist has a therapist’s therapist.
How I got here
I spent ten years in hospital corridors and community clinics — good, urgent work that taught me diagnosis, crisis, and how systems fail tired people. What it never had room for was the fifty unhurried minutes where the actual change happens.
Aldermead is those minutes, given a room of their own. Two rooms, technically. I kept the lamp from my first office; it has heard more brave sentences than most auditoriums.
How I listen
Like it’s the only appointment of the day, because for that hour it is. I’ll interrupt exactly twice per session on average — once to slow you down near something important, once to argue gently with the harshest sentence you say about yourself.
— rehearsing this search is part of starting
The rooms
For in-person work, the room is part of the method. Both of ours are built for the same hour of the day: the soft end of it.
The window room
A window seat over a quiet street, an olive tree doing its best, and dusk arriving on schedule around six.
