Alistair Semmence
Hello, I’m Alistair (he/him).
I’m an integrative therapist (MNCPS Acc.) working with individuals, couples and relationships in Peckham, South London.
MY APPROACH
My approach to therapy is grounded in curiosity. I’m interested in how you experience your life and the world around you. Much of therapy is talking about what’s going on for you. This might include things like anxiety, low mood, relationship difficulties or anything else you’re struggling with at the moment.
I see many of the ways we struggle as understandable responses to what we have lived through. We adapt in the best ways we can, although we might reach a point where those ways of coping no longer work for us. Therapy is a space to understand more about your experience of yourself, your relationships and the world around you. When I work with couples and relationships, I’m interested in what happens between you and what each person’s experience is within the relationship.
I work in a relational and trauma-informed way, paying attention to patterns of connection, protection and disconnection. We each experience the world from our particular vantage point, shaped by our relationships, experiences and aspects of identity such as gender, sexuality, race, class, neurodivergence and disability.
Some suffering is an inevitable part of being human, while some comes from the relationships and circumstances we have had to live within. The ways we are seen, cared for and responded to can shape our relationship with ourselves and others, as can the wider social and cultural worlds we are part of. Therapy offers a place to understand these experiences without assuming that the difficulty simply lies within you.
About ME
I’m mixed heritage (British-Thai) and queer. These aspects of my identity inform my practice and how I understand connection and belonging.
Before training as a psychotherapist, I worked in the tech industry as a researcher, trying to understand how people think and make decisions, and what might sit behind those choices. At Bumble, I worked on topics like dating as a single parent, dating during the COVID-19 pandemic, sexting and consent, and the experiences of minoritised communities on dating apps.
Over time, my curiosity about people and a growing sense that I wanted to work more closely with people's emotional lives led me to psychotherapy. My own experience of being in therapy was an important and transformative part of that journey.
Alongside my private practice, I 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 London.
I’ve been working with clients since June 2023 and have a Diploma in Integrative Psychotherapeutic Counselling from the Metanoia Institute. I am an accredited member of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS).
I’m also currently completing an MSc in Integrative Psychotherapy and am registered with the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) as a psychotherapeutic counsellor.
Sessions
Sessions are weekly and last 50 minutes. They take place in person in Peckham, where we’ll meet at the same time each week.
Individual sessions are £80. Sessions for couples or relationships are £120.
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 from therapy. You’re not expected to share everything or go into detail about difficult experiences. The first session doesn’t commit you to ongoing work. We can decide together afterwards whether continuing feels like a good fit.
If you’d like to get in touch or book an initial session, you can contact me at: hello@alistairsemmence.com