Michelle Williams

Anxiety and burnout can make you feel stuck, but there is hope. I believe that recovery from adversity stimulates you to grow and to fulfil your full potential. My job is to help you to get back on your feet as quickly as possible and give you the tools to feel confident about your future. We will be a good fit if you are interested in:
– a collaborative approach to therapy;
– evidence-based treatment in an easily understandable and accessible way;
– a professional who challenges you and is engaged and doesn’t sit back and nod;
– open mind.

Chartered Counselling Psychologist · Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (AFBPsS) · Registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) · BPS Register of Applied Psychology Practice Supervisors (Registered Supervisor) · Executive MBA, Warwick Business School · Over 20 years of clinical experience in Australia and England · Former BPS London and Home Counties committee member · Trained in CBT, ACT, MBCT, DBT, and mindfulness-based approaches · Accepts private insurance (BUPA, Aviva) and self-paying clients

My professional passion is helping people with anxiety, burnout, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), phobias, and low self-esteem to get back on their feet and start thriving.

I have been a Counselling Psychologist for over 20 years. I don’t want a stuffy patient-doctor relationship. My clients are bright, vibrant, capable people — even if they’re not at their best right now. They need the benefit of my experience and knowledge, but they don’t need anyone talking down to them.

I want to get into the trenches with you to improve what’s going on in your life. In our first two sessions, I’ll conduct a thorough assessment of your needs, write a personalised treatment plan based on the evidence, and then each week we’ll learn a new skill, explore a different way of thinking, or work on a different strategy to get you closer to your goals.

A recent client said, “I’m incredibly glad I found Michelle at the time in my life that I did. I’d previously engaged with various therapists and different types of therapy, but never felt I’d reached a particularly satisfactory conclusion.

I started working with Michelle during a particularly difficult period and a new chapter of change for me. I’d found myself caught in a lifelong cycle of some pretty deep negative dives, many of them career-related and rooted in self-belief and self-worth.

Michelle has an incredible ability to listen, understand and gently but expertly steer. Over our time together, she helped me better understand some of those patterns, build new tools – rooted in my core values – to challenge them and, importantly, navigate a difficult chapter in my life towards some genuinely positive outcomes.

I’ve found our sessions incredibly beneficial – not just in getting me through a period when I really needed support, but in helping me build greater self-awareness and a much stronger toolkit for the future. I’m hugely grateful for Michelle’s ears, steers and expertise, as well as the warmth and humanity she brought to every session.

Although I’m concluding this particular wave of therapy, I don’t see it as the end of my work with Michelle. I fully expect I’ll engage her again – hopefully next time from a place of being less in crisis, and more as an opportunity to refresh, reflect and continue to build.

I couldn’t recommend Michelle and The Blackbird Clinic more highly.”

I offer a free initial phone consultation — please email to arrange.