Roman Romeo

If you are raising a child with autism or ADHD, you may be tired in a way that sleep does not touch. There may be grief you cannot quite name, guilt about how thin your patience has worn, and a quiet anger you would not say out loud to anyone. Or you may have been diagnosed yourself, at thirty or at fifty, and found that it has thrown everything you thought you understood about your own life into question. Either way, almost everything around you is aimed at the child, and very little is aimed at you. Before I trained as a counsellor I spent four years teaching in a specialist school, managing EHCP targets, annual reviews and multi-agency meetings. I have sat on the other side of that table, which means you will not need to spend three sessions explaining the system to me before we can begin. I know what the fight costs, and I know it is usually the person doing the fighting who goes without support. I am an integrative counsellor and a Registered Member of the BACP, which means I draw on more than one way of working and adapt to what suits you. My practice is rooted in Person-Centred Therapy and Transactional Analysis, and I work at relational depth, paying close attention to the patterns we carry from earlier relationships and how they show up in the present. I am attachment-informed, and I bring a calm, grounded presence to our sessions that comes in part from my own long-standing meditation practice. There is no pressure here to be positive, or grateful, or coping. You can bring the parts of this you have nowhere else to put. I also work with adults on a wider range of difficulties, including anxiety, depression, low self-worth, bereavement and loss, relationship difficulties, questions of identity and self-acceptance, and the strain of financial or systemic pressures. I am comfortable exploring questions of meaning, spirituality or faith where these matter to you, without ever imposing my own views. Having come to the UK from Iraqi Kurdistan as a child, I understand something of what it is to move between cultures and to find your place between different worlds. I am particularly aware of how much harder the SEN system can be to navigate for families who are also managing a language barrier or a diagnosis that carries stigma within their community. Reaching out can feel like the hardest step, and asking for something that is just for you can feel almost indulgent when so much of your energy goes to someone else. It is not. You are welcome to book a free 15 minute introductory call, with no pressure and no obligation, simply to talk and see whether this feels right.