About

Nathan T. Dean

Hello! My name is Nathan Dean (he/him, cis/het), and I am a person-centered therapist based in the UK, working with clients all over the world. As a person-centered therapist, my role is to explore your lived experience; rather than give direct advice, we explore together what will work specifically for you, your circumstances, and your view of the world around you. Whether grief, depression, anxiety, or some of the more specific elements listed below, we can create a safe space together to explore your experiences.

I also bring in techniques and theories from other practices, such as gestalt and CBT, but I am always diving into other modalities to create a holistic approach for all my clients, whether part of the western canon of therapeutic techniques, or trying to decolonise my approach.

Below is a break down of what I can bring to your space. And this is key. This time is your time. Whatever you want to discuss, at the pace you feel is beneficial. I will guide, and challenge, where appropriate, but the core is that this is a safe, non-judgemental space for you to explore what you have collected along lifes journey.

Your space, your time, your pace

Let’s talk

Mental Health MOT

Sometimes, we don’t need anything more than a check-in with ourselves. Therapy is often seen as an intervention when things get to their worst point, but we can also relate to our therapeutic spaces as ones to explore where we are at when things are going well, or when the changes are less dramatic or intense. A MHMOT may be exactly what we need for this, an initial six sessions of examining the elements of our life to see where we can use improvement, what is working, and where we are going. We’ll use things such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or the Japanese concept of Ikigai to map out where we’re at, and work from there.

Carers Support

My placement when training as a counsellor was the Carers Support Centre in my area. I learnt alot working with carers: their needs, wants, and the social elements of what it means to care for a loved one, a family member, or friend. If you are in a position as a carer, and need a space to explore the feelings that come from such a role, I have experience in this area I would love to share with you. We can create a safe space suitable for exploring, specifically, the difficulties and successes of taking on a caring role, living alongside COVID, and the sociopolitical landscape that comes with this. This is your time to explore what it means to be a carer today.

Living With Disability

As someone with a stoma bag, I’ve come to learn how to live with Crohn’s Disease, an ileostomy stoma, and the world that comes with. Disabilities are not always visible, and the world is not always designed to be the most beneficial for those of us with such disabilities. Whether living with Crohn’s, IBS, Colitis, stoma, or other disabilities, gastric or otherwise, we can explore what it means to live with conditions that can affect our energy levels, require adjustments for the day to day, and need extra attention now COVID is in our environment. Suffice to say, with whatever ails us, we can find a way of centering back to you, the self, and what benefits you. As I say to all my clients, it isn’t about right or wrong, but what serves you and what doesn’t.

Masculinity

The role of the man has changed. As I’ve worked with more and more people who identify as men, with he/him pronouns, and/or the conventional gender binary, it is evident that our relationship with our masculinity requires examination. Whether managing anger, emotional regulation, or investigating your life purpose, what motivates you, what your new role is in society, we can use the safe space of the therapeutic conversation to figure out what this means in todays landscape. Once again using gestalt to bring to the present, CBT to emotionally regulate, and socially conscious person-centered therapy for your lived experience, we can sit in your truth to find what concerns you, what benefits you, and what can serve you in the future. Let's find your definition of masculinity.

Grief, Depression, Anxiety

Grief, depression, and anxiety are key terms we often come across in therapeutic spaces. Whether the grief of a passed loved one, the loss of a job, a change of living situation, or any other shift, change, or loss, having a place to explore what that grief means to us and how to sit with it is important. As well as this, depression and anxiety are such well-spoken elements of the current climate of our world, and once again having a place to understand it, explore it, and find ways of living with it are important. With some experience working with clinically diagnosed conditions and the malaise of the modern world, we can use CBT and gestalt therapies - bringing you to the present moment - to alleviate these sensations.

ADHD & Neurodiversity

ADHD has moved to quite a front-and-centre position in the modern world; whether a formal diagnosis from a medical practitioner, to self-diagnosing through finding commonality with the experiences of others, many people are finding they identify with ADHD, autism, and neurodiversity as a whole.

With my own experiences with ADHD (self-diagnosed, whilst I await formal diagnosis), and working with students and clients who exhibit certain behaviours, traits, or thought-patterns which may might label as neurodiverse, we can use our space in the counselling room to explore your relationship to ADHD, autism, monotropism, or neurodiversity as a whole. This can include ways to structure your time, relationship guidance, and speaking of new developments in the field, such as rejection sensitive dysphoria.

Whatever concerns, problems, or emotions you may be facing currently, I endeavour to create a safe environment to explore your lived experience, the challenges of your life, and what will serve you moving forward. With my background in teaching (both mainstream and SEN), my person-centered approach, and my willingness to learn about different cultural, social, and political backgrounds, I hope we can work together to find what is best for you. This is your space. This is your time. This is your truth. Let’s explore it together.

(anti)Social Media

You may have noticed a distinct lack of social media for Pronoia. This is intentional. Once upon a time I joined every social media format that came into existence (I remember when BeBo was a thing), and when I was recovering from my surgery, Twitter became my haven for communication. However, social media is designed with aggression in mind. Those who originally designed these apps took the addictive cycles of slot machines and combined that with the research that anger is the most powerful emotion to keep us locked to our screens. Since leaving social media, and using email as my primary method of communication, I have felt such a boon to my mental health.

This is not to say social media has no place: the chronically ill, the housebound, the chosen solitude, and the immunocompromised forced into perpetual self-isolation due to poor government attention to COVID may well require the pacing of social media to create their communities and spaces for communication. What I say here, is to be mindful of that pace: immediacy, especially when commodified, can come with risk.

Off the back of this however is the advent of the fediverse and Mutu networks, as my friend Jay Baker talks about here [strong language warning] and for Freedom News, and this may hold an answer to creating social media disconnected from anxiety and aggression. But I want to cultivate Pronoia as a space for slow media: the newsletter, the email, the conversation. In our modern era, long time is oft forgotten, and is quite the balm to anxiety. So there will be no twitters, facebooks, instagrams or the like to be found here, just long form writing, and a space to breathe with a cuppa.