Sasha Alexandra Maxwell

I know how hard it can be to look for a counsellor. Not just because there are so many profiles, but because underneath it is a much bigger question: “Will I be seen as who I am, not as a problem to get fixed?” Especially if you’ve spent years masking, overthinking, adapting, holding everything together for everyone else, or feeling like you are “too much” and somehow still not enough at the same time. To find someone who will say: “You do not need to come to me with perfect words. Or to explain everything clearly. Sometimes you don’t even need to tell me directly what happened. You do not need to know whether your experiences were “bad enough”, if you want to talk about it – then it matters. And you definitely do not need to perform being okay, being bigger or smaller, or someone else in order to belong here”. I hope I can be this person for you. There is no perfect way to do therapy Some people cry immediately. Others joke about painful things. Some apologise for talking too much. Some panic because they “have nothing to say” or don’t know where to start. Honestly? All of that is part of therapy and is welcome. There is no perfect way to do therapy and no way to fail – isn’t it liberating? You don’t need to perform doing it well, you only need to arrive as you are that day. When insight still doesn’t feel like healing I notice how many of my clients come to therapy already understanding themselves deeply. They know the patterns and where it comes from. They’ve read the books. Listened to podcasts. Done a lot of analysing. And yet somehow they still can’t move on or change things for them. I work a lot with imagery and metaphors. So...think of therapy as standing in a dark forest holding a huge map. The map is everything you already know: your self-awareness, your survival strategies, your patterns, your past. But even with all of that knowledge, it can still feel impossible to know where to go next. Sometimes my role is simply to hold the light beside you while we figure it out together. Sometimes it’s helping you test different tools and see what actually feels right for you. Sometimes it’s simply being there with you in that dark forest for a while, so you don’t have to figure it all out alone. My approach I will meet you where you are, no rush, and tailor my approach to your needs and when possible, preferences, I will never try to fit you into a box. My approach is integrative, trauma-informed and relational, which means I adapt therapy to you and move at your pace. Depending on what feels helpful, sessions may include gentle reflection, exploring patterns and emotions, working creatively with metaphors or imagery, nervous system awareness, parts work, or simply slowing things down together enough to notice what is happening underneath the surface. For sensitive, self-aware and neurodivergent people I often work with neurodivergent adults, highly sensitive and deeply self-aware people, as well as clients experiencing trauma, sexual violence/domestic abuse experience, burnout, perfectionism, anxiety, emotional overwhelm, identity struggles, cultural displacement and relationship difficulties. I naturally work creatively and frequently use different ways of exploring experiences that don’t always rely on talking about painful things directly. Sometimes people don’t yet have words for what happened to them, or it simply doesn’t feel safe enough to speak openly, and that’s okay. Therapy does not have to mean forcing yourself to relive or explain everything before you are ready (or ever, if that does not feel right for you). A place to slowly come back to yourself Sometimes being with me becomes the place where clients can slowly get back in touch with who they are. A place where they feel that someone is there with them who genuinely gets them, understands them, and sees the bigger picture as well as the tiniest details. A little bit about me I meet you as a human, not just a professional, offering creative integrative counselling. Not as someone who has life perfectly figured out. But as a whole human being with many parts of my own some confident some confused some powerful some vulnerable.. As a neurodivergent counsellor myself, I feel one of my strengths is noticing patterns, emotions, contradictions and meanings deeply, while also experiencing things alongside my clients in a very human way. I discovered my own neurodivergence later in life, in my late 30s, and it suddenly gave words and meaning to so many years of adapting, masking, perfectionism and trying to function in ways that did not always fit me naturally. I am also a mother who has experienced intense burnout, postnatal anxiety, and the complexity of trying to understand and raise a neurodivergent child while learning myself at the same time. As someone who has lived between cultures and languages for most of my life, I understand what it can feel like to carry multiple identities at once. To feel both connected and disconnected. To constantly translate yourself. To sometimes feel as though parts of you became lost in translation. My feminist training while working within sexual violence and domestic abuse services also gave language to experiences of power, oppression and invisibility that many people carry silently for years without fully understanding why something hurt so deeply. And as a person outside the therapy room… I’m a deeply sensitive person who survives on dark chocolate between sessions, and genuinely thinks stroking a cat is a remedy for almost everything. I love nature, quiet places, deep conversations, creativity, and those rare moments when everything slows down enough to simply exhale and just be. And I look forward to meeting you in your own wholeness, complexity and diversity, too. And for those who feel more at home expressing themselves in Russian, I also offer counselling in both English and Russian.