Agata Podstepska

Agata Podstepska has a special interest in borderline personality disorder (BPD) as well as complex post-traumatic stress disorder (cPTSD). She has knowledge and insight into both cognitive and dialectical behaviour therapy (CBT and DBT) techniques which are evidence-based methods seen to be most successful in managing these disorders. She understands how interpersonal skills, distress tolerance and emotional regulation are an important aspect of these and can help you improve these skills to better manage your issues.

As a trainee therapist, she is currently learning to work with depression and anxiety disorders such as panic disorder, phobias, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and separation anxiety.

Agata Podstepska has an understanding of how childhood emotional neglect and abuse had lead to complex trauma which leads people to have difficulties forming and maintaining relationships, she is committed to helping people gain insight in to how their early experiences are influencing them in the here and now. Agata helps people create change in their mood and interpersonal relationships through offering strategies such as emotional regulation, behavioural strategies and cognitive tools.

Therapy

Building a good therapeutic relationship determines how successful treatment can be, and Agata’s main goal is to work with her clients to do this. Her aim is to give her clients a safe environment where they can be honest and open without feeling pressured or judged. She also has a great understanding of how culture, religion, spirituality and different socioeconomic factors can impact mental health and finds it very important to put her client’s issues into context to gather a deeper insight. Therapy can be a difficult first step to growth and improvement of your mental wellbeing, and Agata works to ease her clients into the process to make them more comfortable in their own time.

Your first session with Agata will help her understand your issues and how you can work together to find coping mechanisms to manage them. In following sessions, both behavioural and psychodynamic techniques will be used to achieve your therapeutic goals. You may also be given exercises to partake in outside of your therapy sessions. This will help build on these techniques and equip you with the skills you need to deal with your issues ina real-life context.

Education

Agata has graduated with a Masters in Psychology and had previously attended Queen Mary University of London and received a 2:1 in BSc Biomedical Sciences. She has extensive knowledge in research, aims to become a Counselling Psychologist after completing her masters and is receiving clinical supervision at our clinic.