Alistair Semmence
Hello, I’m Alistair (he/him).
I’m a UKCP trainee psychotherapist and counsellor based in Peckham, South London.
MY APPROACH
I work with individuals and with couples/relationships. The heart of the work is the same in each case: paying close attention to patterns of connection, protection and disconnection and creating enough safety for something new to emerge.
If you’re coming on your own, therapy will involve examining and making sense of patterns in your life and relationships that may no longer feel helpful. This might include experiences of not feeling fully seen or understood, the impact of difficult or overwhelming experiences, or questions of identity, belonging or direction. Alongside what you bring to talk about, we’ll pay attention to how you experience our relationship. This can offer important clues about how you’ve learned to relate, how you protect yourself, and what feels possible or difficult in connection. We’ll work at a pace shaped by what feels manageable for you while respecting the ways you’ve learned to survive.
If you’re coming as a couple or relationship, the focus shifts to what happens between you. This work isn’t limited to romantic partners. I also work with friendships, family and professional relationships, as well as other connections that play an important role in your life. Rather than trying to find out who is right or wrong, we’ll look at how you move towards and away from one another. We’ll notice how disagreements unfold, where misunderstandings arise and where things tend to get stuck. The work is about slowing the conversation down and helping each person feel heard. It is also about understanding how earlier experiences shape how you relate to each another now.
In both individual and relationship therapy, I draw on relational psychoanalysis, trauma-informed neuroscience, existential and liberation perspectives. This helps me stay close to lived experience and to how stress, emotion and relationship are held and expressed. I see many of the ways we struggle as understandable and reasonable responses to what we have lived through. We adapt to survive in the best way we can but there might come a point where these adaptations no longer serve us. Therapy can offer a space to move beyond survival and towards a more connected and fulfilling way of living.
About ME
What drew me to this work was a long-standing curiosity about people, relationships and how we make sense of our lives. I’m mixed heritage (British-Thai) and queer, and my experiences of difference and belonging have shaped how I practise.
Alongside my private practice, I’ve completed two years of clinical placements at CliniQ, a holistic wellbeing and sexual health clinic for trans, non-binary and gender diverse people, and at Transform, a low-cost counselling service in South-East London.
Before training as a psychotherapist, I worked in the tech industry as a qualitative researcher. This included work with a dating app company on sensitive and personal topics such as dating as a single parent, dating during the COVID-19 pandemic, sexting and consent, and the experiences of minoritised communities on dating apps. My curiosity about who people are and how they tell their stories led me towards psychotherapy. Being in therapy myself was an important and transformative part of that journey.
I’ve been working with clients since June 2023. I’m currently in the fourth year of a five-year MSc in Integrative Psychotherapy at the Metanoia Institute. I’ve completed the training and clinical requirements for the Diploma in Psychotherapeutic Counselling and will receive this in January 2026.
Sessions
I work with individuals and with couples or relationships on a weekly basis. Sessions are 50 minutes and take place either in person in Peckham or online. We’ll meet at the same time every week.
Individual sessions are £70. Sessions for couples or relationships are £105.
Our first session is a chance for us to meet and get a sense of whether working together feels right. We’ll talk about what has brought you and what you might be hoping for, as well as whether shorter-term or longer-term work feels most helpful.
If you’d like to get in touch or book an initial session, you can contact me at: hello@alistairsemmence.com