About Yvonne Forward

After completing my degree in 1992, and working at a series of uninspiring jobs, I began to build an interest in mental health and wellbeing, and enrolled on a one-year foundation course in Psychotherapy and Counselling at Regent's College, London.

This introduction motivated me to train for a further four years at The Bowlby Centre, London — a specialist training institute in attachment-based, psychoanalytic psychotherapy. During this time I developed a deeper understanding of how secure and supportive relationships in childhood help us develop a sense of who we are, and how the absence of that security can shape the struggles we face as adults.

I now have 25 years' experience working with individuals and couples from many different backgrounds, ages, and with varied reasons for seeking therapy — including anxiety and phobias, depression, addiction, loss and bereavement, the impact of trauma and abuse, relationship and parenting difficulties, self-harming, and eating disorders.

My work is also informed by Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), which brings a focused, experience-near way of helping people recognise and work through the anxieties and defences that can keep them from feeling their true emotions. I also bring a deep understanding of neurodiversity to my practice, so that therapy is shaped around how each person actually experiences and processes the world.

As well as my therapeutic work with individuals and couples, I supervise psychotherapists from a range of modalities. Through my own personal therapeutic journey, both before and during training, I am passionate about what psychotherapy can offer and the changes it can bring about.