Maria Gracia Abad

Therapy with me is collaborative, curious, and tailored to you. I pay close attention to your thoughts, emotions, and patterns, and I ask questions that help you notice, reflect, and gain insight. My style is thoughtful and analytical, I listen carefully, but I'm never passive. I speak up when it's helpful, to guide, clarify, or gently challenge in ways that support your growth. A recurring theme in my work is the tendency to rely on thinking, analysing, or self-reliance to manage emotional experiences, often while being the person others turn to for support. These are genuine strengths, but they can become exhausting when emotions feel harder to access, or when self-criticism and overthinking quietly take over. In therapy, we explore these patterns with curiosity rather than judgement, looking at how they developed and what keeps them in place. We'll explore these patterns with curiosity rather than judgement, creating space for both insight and change. Some sessions are more reflective, exploring emotions and experiences as they arise. Others are more practical, focusing on strategies and small steps to navigate everyday challenges. The balance depends on what's useful for you at the time. I draw on evidence-based approaches tailored to your specific needs: - CBT helps us explore how thoughts, emotions, and behaviours connect, noticing and shifting unhelpful patterns that keep you stuck. - EMDR allows us to process painful past experiences and meaningfully reduce their ongoing emotional impact. - Person-centred therapy ensures you always lead, I follow your pace, your priorities, and what feels safe and meaningful at any given time. Clients often tell me they feel more grounded, clearer, and more connected to themselves over time. My aim is to help you understand your experiences, reduce self-blame, and develop more supportive ways of responding to life. In our first sessions, we'll explore what brings you here and what you'd like from therapy. Together we'll shape a direction that fits, whether that means processing past experiences, managing present challenges, or finding new ways of responding to life events. Some people arrive knowing exactly what they want to work on; others need time to build trust before going deeper. I'm here for both. If your needs fall outside my areas of expertise, I'll always support you in finding the right referral. Getting you the right care matters more than keeping you in the therapy room. Reaching out for therapy can feel uncertain or daunting. You don't need clarity or the right words to begin, just reach out, and we'll find our way from there. The best way to reach me is by email or by leaving a voicemail with your name, number, and best time to call back. I'm often in session during the day and may not be able to answer directly, but I'll get back to you as soon as I can.