You became who you needed to be. It's no longer sustainable.
Depth-oriented work for professionals navigating the cost of high performance.
High function. Low reserves.
You are capable, reliable, and often the one others depend on. From the outside, things work. What changes is how much it takes to keep it that way.
What once felt like strength, being composed, self-sufficient, and in control, now feels harder to sustain. The same responses repeat, even when you can see them clearly.
The drive to keep functioning is still there. The capacity underneath it is thinning. What brings people here is rarely crisis alone. More often, it is the recognition that insight has not changed the experience itself.
If this feels familiar, you don't have to keep managing it alone.
I work with professionals in finance, law, technology, and the creative industries, often in senior or leadership positions.
Many are navigating significant internal pressure beneath outward success.
Dr Anne Li, CPsychol, DPsych
Chartered Counselling Psychologist (HCPC)
Former Investment Banking Professional
Work offered online, with limited in-person availability in central London, across ongoing therapy, focused consultations, leadership work, and intensives.
→ Explore ways of working
Friction points in high-pressure lives
“I’M DOING WELL, BUT IT NEVER FEELS LIKE ENOUGH.”
You hold yourself to a high standard, and it’s become automatic.
Even when you stop, your mind keeps going. Reviewing conversations. Anticipating problems. Adjusting to what’s needed.
Rest doesn’t fully land. There’s a background tension, and a growing distance from what you actually feel.
“MY RELATIONSHIPS FEEL STRAINED, EVEN WHEN I CARE DEEPLY.”
You want closeness, but something in relationships feels effortful or slightly out of reach.
You find yourself managing, accommodating, or carrying more than you mean to.
The same dynamics repeat, leaving you frustrated, emotionally distant, or unsure why connection still feels difficult.
“I DON’T KNOW WHO I AM OUTSIDE THE ROLES I PERFORM.”
You’ve adapted to expectations in work, family, or culture for so long that it has become difficult to tell what is truly yours.
Functioning takes priority over feeling. Responsibility over preference.
Life may look full from the outside, while internally something feels muted, distant, or missing.
“Dismantling the tyranny of “should”, one gentle, grounded truth at a time.”
When insight isn’t enough
It helps where insight, strategy, or self-understanding no longer feel sufficient on their own.
Many of the people I work with already understand the pattern. They know where it came from, recognise it when it appears, and understand the costs it carries.
The question is rarely Why is this happening? It is: If I already understand it, why does it keep happening?
Understanding a pattern and changing a pattern are different processes.
You may recognise perfectionism and still find yourself unable to stop pushing. You may understand that your self-worth has become tied to achievement and still feel compelled to prove yourself. You may see the costs of emotional self-reliance and still struggle to ask for help.
These responses have often been practised for decades, becoming increasingly automatic, particularly under pressure.
The work aims to loosen the grip of these patterns. Change develops through awareness, emotional processing, behavioural experimentation, and new relational experiences. With practice, different ways of thinking, feeling, and responding become increasingly available.
The aim is greater flexibility and freedom, so that what once felt inevitable gradually becomes a choice.
→ Explore my therapeutic approach
How change becomes possible
Psychological change is rarely a linear process. It develops through deeper understanding, emotional processing, an increased capacity to tolerate discomfort and vulnerability, relational exploration and repeated practice.
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Recognising patterns
Developing a more nuanced awareness of recurring ways of thinking, feeling and relating, including responses that have become automatic or difficult to recognise.
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Understanding their protective functions
Exploring how these patterns developed, what they once helped us manage or avoid, and why they may continue even when they are no longer serving us.
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Processing emotions and building capacity
Processing difficult experiences, including grief for what was lost or missing, while developing greater capacity to tolerate vulnerability, discomfort and uncertainty without relying on familiar protective responses.
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Experimenting in therapy
Noticing how familiar patterns emerge within the therapeutic relationship and exploring different ways of expressing needs, tolerating discomfort and relating to another person.
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Practising in everyday life
Experimenting with new ways of responding in real situations, whether setting boundaries, taking relational risks, tolerating uncertainty or relinquishing control.
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Integrating and consolidating change
Through repeated experience and practice, new responses become more accessible and gradually feel more natural in everyday life.
→ A more detailed exploration can be found in How Change Becomes Possible.
Ways of working together
From ongoing therapy to more focused psychological work, depending on your needs.
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Individual therapy
Ongoing, in-depth psychological work
Weekly therapy to explore recurring patterns, process difficult experiences and develop more flexible ways of relating to yourself and others. Suited to those seeking meaningful, lasting change rather than a quick solution.
Available online and in person in central London.
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Psychological intensives
Concentrated work on a particular issue
Extended sessions over a half-day, full day, or multiple days, allowing deeper exploration of a specific difficulty without the usual constraints of weekly therapy.
→ Learn more about Psychological Intensives
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Focused consultation
Clarity around a specific challenge or decision
A focused, 90-minute consultation to explore a particular difficulty, decision or life transition. Designed to offer psychological perspective and help clarify next steps, without committing to ongoing therapy.
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Leadership + executive work
The psychological dimensions of leadership
Exploring the personal demands of leadership, including decision-making, performance pressure, conflict, visibility, burnout and workplace relationships. The focus extends beyond effectiveness to understanding the person behind the role.
→ Learn more about Leadership & Executive Work
About
With more than fourteen years of clinical experience across NHS and private settings, I have worked with people from a wide range of professional, cultural, and personal backgrounds. Today, I work primarily with high-performing professionals facing questions of identity, relationships, burnout, purpose, and change.
Before training as a psychologist, I worked in investment banking and later in the creative industries. This continues to inform how I think about performance, identity, and internal pressure, particularly in environments where competence is highly valued and difficulty is often hidden.
As a British Chinese clinician, I am attentive to questions of identity, belonging, expectation, and adaptation across cultures, environments, and family systems. Having spent much of my life between cultures, including periods living and working in Beijing, Paris, and Buenos Aires, I am particularly attuned to the experience of living internationally, navigating multiple identities, and responding to periods of transition, loss, and reinvention.
I am drawn to this work partly because I know this territory from the inside: the standards, responsibilities, and self-expectations that often accompany achievement, together with the personal costs that can emerge when those strategies become our primary way of relating to ourselves and others.
My approach is relational, depth-oriented, and integrative, drawing from psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, somatic, existential, and trauma-informed approaches, including EMDR. Rather than applying a single model, I draw on different perspectives according to the needs of the individual, paying close attention to recurring patterns, the therapeutic relationship, and the conditions that allow lasting change to occur.
Relationships and attachment sit at the heart of much of my work. I am particularly interested in the patterns that emerge in close relationships, including how we navigate intimacy, conflict, dependence, autonomy, and connection. This remains a focus of both my clinical work and ongoing professional development, including further training in couples therapy.
I am attentive and curious by nature, and often more direct than people expect. This tends to suit thoughtful, capable people who recognise that understanding a pattern and changing it are not always the same thing.
How we learn to protect ourselves
At the core of this work is the recognition that how we think, feel, and relate is shaped early, within the environments in which we grow up.
When needs for safety, stability, attention, or acceptance are not fully met, we adapt. These adaptations often begin as ways of securing belonging, protection, or control.
They can support achievement, competence, and self-reliance, while also narrowing how we live and relate. What once helped can eventually become limiting.
This work creates space to recognise these patterns more clearly, so different ways of experiencing and responding can emerge.
Further reading: Is it always the parents' fault?
Professional Credentials
Qualifications
Doctorate in Counselling Psychology (DPsych)
Chartered Counselling Psychologist (CPsychol), British Psychological Society
Registered Practitioner Psychologist, Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)
London School of Economics (BSc)
Experience & Additional Training
Over 14 years’ clinical experience across the NHS and private practice
Background in investment banking and the creative industries
EMDR trained
Further training in couples therapy
Selected Insights
Fees
ONGOING INDIVIDUAL THERAPY
Online: £200
In-person: £220
50 minutes
FOCUSED CONSULTATION
Online: £380
In-person: £400
90 minutes
LEADERSHIP WORK
Structured according to the scope and format of the work. Discussed at initial consultation.
PSYCHOLOGICAL INTENSIVES
Arranged on a case-by-case basis. Fees reflect the depth and extended format of the work.
I work primarily with self-funding clients, and with a select number of insurers including Allianz, Bupa Global, Cigna, GeoBlue, Healix, and WPA. Bupa UK referrals are not currently accepted.
Questions?
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You can begin with a complimentary 15-minute introductory phone call or arrange an initial consultation. The introductory call offers an opportunity to ask questions and briefly discuss what you are looking for, while the initial consultation allows us to explore your circumstances in greater depth and consider whether working together would be a good fit.
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The initial consultation is a 50-minute session in which we explore what has brought you to therapy, your current difficulties and relevant aspects of your history. It also offers an opportunity to experience how I work, ask questions and consider whether continuing together would be helpful.
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I work with people experiencing anxiety, burnout, perfectionism, self-criticism and persistent internal pressure, often alongside considerable professional achievement.
Other areas include relationship difficulties, emotional self-reliance, boundaries, questions of identity and significant life transitions. The work often involves understanding the underlying patterns that contribute to these difficulties, rather than focusing solely on individual symptoms.
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Many capable and thoughtful people are accustomed to relying on their own insight and resilience.
Therapy offers a different kind of space, where you can explore experiences with someone trained to recognise psychological patterns and relational dynamics that can be difficult to see or shift on your own.
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Therapy explores emotional experiences, relational patterns and the influence of past and present experiences on how we think, feel and relate. Coaching typically focuses more directly on current challenges, leadership, decision-making and professional development.
The distinction is not always clear-cut. My coaching work draws on my clinical training, allowing us to consider both practical challenges and the underlying psychological dynamics that may influence them.
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Ongoing therapy usually involves weekly 50-minute sessions, although the overall duration varies according to individual needs. Some people work for a defined period around a particular difficulty, while others continue for longer to explore longstanding patterns. More focused formats, including psychological intensives and extended consultations, are also available where appropriate.
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Yes. Sessions are available online via secure video, allowing you to attend from home or while travelling. Online therapy can be as effective as in-person work for many people and offers greater flexibility.
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I work with selected international and UK health insurance providers, including Allianz, Bupa Global, Cigna, Healix and WPA, subject to availability and policy arrangements.
If you intend to use insurance, please mention your provider when enquiring and check your policy’s authorisation and reimbursement requirements in advance.
If this feels familiar
When managing is no longer enough
An initial conversation can help clarify what you’re looking for and which approach might be most helpful.
A complimentary 15-minute introductory phone call is available before arranging a consultation.