I provide psychological therapy for young adults and adults.
My practice is conveniently located at Sweelinckplein in The Hague, and I also offer online therapy, bringing support to you wherever you are.

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​Therapy for Young-Adults 

Young adulthood is a significant developmental transition — generally spanning the late teens through the twenties — when autonomy increases and life-defining choices begin to take shape. It is a phase marked by identity formation, academic and professional direction, intimate relationships, and growing independence.

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While this period can be rich with possibility, it can also bring uncertainty, pressure, and emotional vulnerability. Many young adults experience anxiety, self-doubt, perfectionism, relational difficulties, or a quiet sense of not feeling anchored — reflecting the ongoing need for a “holding environment,” as described by Donald Winnicott, in which the self can feel supported while emerging into independence.

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For those living abroad, these challenges may intensify, as building a life in a new country requires adaptation, resilience, and often the navigation of loneliness or cultural displacement. Without a reliable relational context, it can be harder to feel secure and grounded in oneself.

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In my one-to-one counseling work, I offer a steady and attuned space — a relational holding environment — where these experiences can be explored in depth.

 

Together, we look beyond surface stressors to understand underlying patterns, emotional responses, and relational dynamics, fostering a sense of containment, safety, and continuity.

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The aim is not simply symptom relief, but the development of a stronger, more grounded sense of self — one that can navigate adulthood with greater clarity, stability, and trust, supported by the relational experience of therapy as a space for growth and connection.

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Therapy for Adults

Adulthood brings opportunities, but it also comes with challenges that can feel persistent, complex, and sometimes overwhelming. Balancing work, relationships, family responsibilities, and personal growth can create stress, anxiety, or a sense of disconnection from yourself.

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Many adults carry the influence of earlier experiences, including childhood trauma, neglect, or relational wounds. Early experiences—sometimes subtle, sometimes profound—shape how we respond to stress, form relationships, and understand ourselves. These patterns often operate beneath awareness, yet continue to influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

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In my work with adults, I provide a steady, attuned space where both present challenges and deeper underlying patterns can be explored safely. Within this environment, you can gradually feel supported while reflecting on emotional patterns, relational histories, and past experiences, including trauma, that may be shaping your present life.

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This process fosters insight, self-understanding, and the development of healthier ways of relating to yourself and others.

Adults often bring to therapy concerns such as:

• Anxiety, stress, or feeling overwhelmed

• Persistent low mood or depression

• Relationship difficulties or challenges with intimacy and boundaries

• Self-criticism, perfectionism, or unresolved shame

• Life transitions, career changes, or identity shifts

• Emotional regulation and coping with long-term stress

 

I work from an integrative, trauma-informed perspective that considers mind, body, and emotional history. Childhood experiences, especially those involving trauma or neglect, can leave imprints in the nervous system and body. By exploring these experiences in a consistent, containing, and responsive space, therapy can help restore a sense of safety, connection, and agency.

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Therapy for adults is a gradual, collaborative process. It is about uncovering the roots of your patterns, strengthening self-awareness, and cultivating resilience, presence, and trust in yourself. Over time, your nervous system can experience safety, and meaningful, sustainable change becomes possible.

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Approach

​​​​​​​I work with Integrative, Psychosomatic and Trauma orientated Approach.

My background in Ayurveda Medicine and Western Medicine, the two opposing foundations of treating physical and mental illnesses, help me to understand human body in better way.  

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Psychosomatic Approach

My analytical listening is based on the psychosomatic theory of the French School, developed by Pierre Marty (1918–1993), which understands the body and mind as inseparable dimensions of the human experience.

This approach recognizes that when there are difficulties in identifying, feeling, or processing emotions, psychic tensions can be expressed directly in the body through physical symptoms or illness.

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Unlike other perspectives, symptoms are not seen as symbols to be interpreted, but as the effect of emotional overload that has not found psychic pathways for processing.

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In clinical practice, I observe how each person manages their affects, emotional rhythm, and internal resources. The therapeutic work aims to strengthen the capacity to perceive, name, and process emotions, fostering greater integration between mind and body. It is a careful and gradual process that respects each individual’s uniqueness, seeking not only symptom relief but also greater psychic autonomy, improved quality of life, and a more conscious relationship with one’s own body.

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Psychosomatic theory also informs my understanding of medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS), defined as symptoms whose origin remains unclear even after proper medical evaluation, helps me to understand Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms (MUPS)  in different level.

MUPS - have been defined as symptoms of which the origins remain unclear after adequate history taking, physical examination and careful consideration of the psychosocial context by a physician. 

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Nowadays 70% of medical consultations are classified as MUPS. 

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General practitioners (GPs) often experience patients with MUPS as difficult to manage. While many GPs consider MUPS to be an expression of psychological distress, patients do not always see the connection between their symptoms and distress. GPs also experience problems in providing plausible explanations for the origin of the symptoms to their patients. The mismatch between perceptions of GPs and patients as described above explains why patients with MUPS are often dissatisfied with the medical care that they receive. Limited consultation time, lack of skills of the GP and patients’ resistance towards psychosocial attributions contribute to these difficulties.

Patients are often dissatisfied with the medical care they receive. They report that they experience a lack of empathy and support, feel stigmatised and not taken seriously, and are worried because neither they nor their physicians understand where the symptoms come from. 

 

The process explores the mental, emotional, physical and biological aspects of  your own health and provides detailed assessments with practical exercises so you can understand and participate in your own healing process.

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Psychosomatics empowers you with a deeper understanding of your innate tendencies and the subtle but powerful changes required to achieve greater satisfaction in all aspects of life, including relationships, occupation and health.

 

As a psychologist, I can help you navigate your country’s healthcare system in a more comfortable and supportive way — acting as a bridge in communication with your doctor and fostering a more integrative approach to your overall well-being.

 

Integrative approach

involves the process of making whole: taking disowned, unaware, unresolved or fragmented aspects of the self and integrating them within a cohesive entity. Through integration, it becomes possible for you to engage the world with full contact and to have the courage to face each moment openly and freshly, without the protection of a preformed opinion, position, attitude, or expectation. An objective of Integrative therapy includes having each person assume personal awareness and responsibility so that their behavior is by choice in the current situation and not stimulated by compulsion, fear, or conditioning. This is accomplished in part through the use of the therapist-client relationship — the ability to create full interpersonal contact in the present as a stepping stone to healthier relationships with other people and a satisfying sense of self.

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The original and primary meaning of “integrative psychotherapy” was composed by Dr. Richard G. Erskine in 1972 while he was a professor at the University of Illinois. Integrative Psychotherapy is about the process of integrating the personality. It involves the psychotherapist facilitating clients‘ development of a comprehensive and congruent narrative of their sense of self; replacing archaic means of self-protection with mature forms of self-stabilization and self-regulation; and, becoming aware of unconscious relational patterns so that the person can learn and grow from each experience in life.

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Is composed of a collection of developmentally-based and relationally-focused concepts about the practice of therapy. The theories and methods of Integrative Psychotherapy serve as a blueprint for the psychologist to facilitate clients’ internal integration of physiological sensations, feelings, thoughts, and actions. In short, integration means becoming whole, with full access to all that one is and may become. The term integrative refers to the full synthesis of affective, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological - the integration or assimilation within you of the fragmented or fixated aspects of the personality.

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The word “Integrative” of Integrative therapy also refers to the integration of theory, the bringing together of affective, cognitive, behavioral and physiological dimensions of human functioning, within a relational system. The concepts are utilized within a perspective of human development in which each phase of life presents heightened developmental tasks, need sensitivities, crises, and opportunities for new learning. The quality of the therapist to client relationship is viewed as the central factor in the success of psychotherapy.

Integrative approach takes into account many views of human functioning: psychodynamic, client-centered, behaviorist, family therapy, Gestalt therapy, neo-Reichian, object relations theories, psychoanalytic self- psychology, and transactional analysis. Each provides a valid explanation of behavior, and each is enhanced when selectively integrated with the others.

 

The therapeutic interventions are based on research-validated knowledge of normal developmental process and the theories describing the self-protective defensive processes used when there are interruptions in normal development.

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Eight philosophical principles form the foundation of the theory and methods articulated in a relationship-focused and developmentally-based Integrative therapy. These principles reflect the value system and attitudes toward the practice of therapy.

• All people are equally valuable: It is a therapeutic responsibility to find ways to value every client even if their behavior or what motivates them is not understood. This involves respecting their vulnerability, as well as their attempts at being invulnerable, while maintaining a therapeutic relationship that fosters a sense of security.

• All human experience is organized physiologically, affectively and/or cognitively: Our biological imperatives require that we make meaning of our phenomenological experiences and that we share those meanings with others in relationship.

• All human behavior has meaning in some context: All problematic behaviors serve some psychological function such as reparation, prediction, identity, continuity, stability, or enhancement. Before focusing on behavioral change in therapy it is essential to know and appreciate the client’s phenomenological experiences and to inquire about the various psychological functions that their behaviors serve.

• Internal and external contact is essential for human functioning: In Integrative Psychotherapy, one of the definitions of psychological health is the ability of an individual to be aware of both internal and external processes.

• All people are relationship-seeking and interdependent throughout life: Interpersonal relationships are essential throughout the entire life cycle; they are the manifestation of a biological imperative that provides a basic motivation for human behaviour.

• Humans have an innate thrust to grow. There is a natural force within people to grow, heal, and explore; to express the human capacity to be all that one can be.

• Humans suffer from relational disruptions: A developmentally-based, relationally-focused Integrative therapy emphasizes a non-pathological perspective in understanding people’s behavior.

• The intersubjective process of therapy is more important than the content of the therapy: Intersubjectivity refers to the synthesis of two people sharing an experience together; each is influenced by the other. The therapy process is co-created. Therefore, no two psychologists will ever do the same therapy — each therapist is idiosyncratic in how they interact with their clients. The therapist’s attitudes and demeanor, the quality of interpersonal relationship and involvement, are just as important, sometimes even more so, than any specific theory or method.

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Several research studies have shown that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is the essential factor in behavior change and psychological growth. For a therapeutic relationship to be effective the psychologist must be committed to the positive life change of their clients and must be guided by respect for their integrity. Through respect, kindness, and contact, the constant presence allows an interpersonal relationship that affirms clients’ integrity to emerge. Such a therapeutic relationship:

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• enhances each client’s understanding of his or her history and inner experience;

• furnishes each client with a sense that his or her behavior has an important psychological function;

• fosters the capacity for full internal and external contact;

• provides the opportunity for each client to experience being seen as a unique and valuable human being;

• explores creative options and outlets; and,

• nourishes the possibility of pleasure in relationships.

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​​and Trauma related approach

trauma-related approach is not a rigid, technique-driven model but a way of understanding human experience through the lens of how overwhelming events shape the mind, brain, and body.

 

Trauma is not defined solely by what happened; it is defined by what happens inside us as a result. When experiences overwhelm our capacity to cope, the nervous system adapts for survival. These adaptations—hypervigilance, numbness, disconnection, people-pleasing, shame, or chronic stress—are not signs of weakness. They are intelligent survival responses that once helped us endure what felt unbearable.

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Because trauma lives not only in memory but in the body, this approach pays close attention to felt experience. Safety is not assumed; it is intentionally cultivated. The pace of therapy respects your nervous system. Grounding, awareness of bodily sensations, breath, and present-moment orientation help restore a sense of regulation. When the body begins to feel safer, the mind can process what was previously overwhelming.

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Honoring your voice and your choice is central. Trauma often involves powerlessness or loss of control, so healing requires restoring agency. Collaboration replaces authority. You are not “treated”; you are partnered with. Compassion and respect are the foundation—especially when protective behaviors have been misunderstood or judged in the past.

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Traumatic experiences frequently occur within relationships. When harm comes from someone we depended on, it can fracture our sense of self and distort our expectations of others. Betrayal can lead to deep mistrust, hyper-independence, or clinging for safety. A trauma-related approach understands these patterns as relational wounds rather than character flaws. The therapeutic relationship becomes a space where trust is rebuilt slowly, consistently, and without pressure.

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This approach also recognizes that unresolved trauma can surface as anxiety, depression, addiction, chronic illness, or relational struggles. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with you?” it asks, “What happened to you?” and “How did you learn to survive?” By reframing symptoms as adaptations, shame begins to soften.

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Above all, the goal is integration—helping you feel grounded, safe, and connected: to the present moment, to your body, and to the world around you. Healing involves restoring your capacity to experience aliveness, choice, and meaningful connection, so survival responses no longer have to run your life.

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