Margaret Ross is a Psychotherapist and Integrative Arts Therapist with over 15 years’ experience working both privately and within a multidisciplinary team in the NHS. She has knowledge and experience of working therapeutically with individual adults and with couples, where one or both people in the couple are neurodiverse, or where a child or other family member is neurodiverse. She understands the particular challenges that may affect people who have been diagnosed in childhood, or later as an adult, or are currently undergoing a diagnostic assessment and can offer support and guidance with this process. She has extensive experience of working with people experiencing work burnout and discrimination in the workplace.

Her approach is neuro-affirmative and person-centred, geared to each individual client’s specific needs and difficulties, with or without an official diagnosis. She is informed in both psychodynamic and CBT approaches, particularly by her training in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) which, when modified, can be extremely helpful for clients on the Autism Spectrum.

She believes that the aim of therapy is to help the person involved move towards a more manageable relationship with their particular situation, which will be different for each individual. The therapeutic relationship offers a safe and confidential space to both explore and assist the person in thinking about their feelings and difficulties and to help them to identify and establish areas for growth and change in a way that facilitates a positive outcome and a reduction in adverse symptoms and unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaviour. Her aim, therefore, is to help people to thrive in a world where the odds can sometimes seem stacked against them and where habitual patterns of thinking and behaviour have become unhelpful and self-confidence and self-esteem have often been undermined. Whilst a diagnosis offers an essential framework of knowledge and understanding, it is always the individual and their own experience of life which is the starting point in her therapeutic approach.

Her particular areas of interest and expertise are: ASD/ADHD/AuDHD, Sensory Overload and Emotional Dysregulation, Masking, Developmental and Complex Trauma, Anxiety and Depression particularly associated with neurodiversity as well as with neurotypical clients. She has experience of working with OCD, Eating Disorders, Panic Disorders, Self-Har and Abusive Relationships, Loss and Bereavement. She offers a hybrid model of face-to-face and online therapy in our practice in North London.