Sebastian Colonna

Sebastian offers weekly psychodynamic psychotherapy and counselling sessions in person and online in a safe and confidential setting to a wide range of individuals in emotional distress and psychological need experiencing anxiety and difficulties in living due to trauma and loss and who wish to consolidate their life by becoming more psychologically aware.

The psychodynamic approach provides a unique framework for thinking about mental health in that it holds at its core a focus on the unconscious dynamics that inform but elude our way of being (or not being) ourselves in the world. Through the relationship with the therapist and a conversation that is patient led and overseen by the practitioner, unconscious motivations and patterns of thinking that affect how we feel and behave can be contained, held and brought to awareness safely, often for the first time, and then thought about in order to effect meaningful and lasting change to how we relate to ourselves and others. In this way, psychodynamic therapy provides an opportunity to look at ourselves and our life from the inside out and gradually relinquish old patterns of relating and develop new ones that are better suited to the present and to recover.

Sebastian provides both short-term and long-term therapeutic work. Short-term work is useful if you wish to work on a specific issue. Long-term work is open-ended and allows time for your issues to surface and be worked on in depth and at your own pace. In your initial session(s), Sebastian will determine with you what is best suited to your therapeutic needs. If you decide to work together, by mutual agreement, sessions will usually take place at the same time each week and will last for 50 minutes.

Sebastian is a fully qualified, accredited and insured psychodynamic psychotherapist and counsellor working in private practice at The Awareness Centre, Tooting, and online.

He studied psychotherapy and human development at the School of Psychotherapy and Psychology, Regent’s University London, the British Psychotherapy Foundation and Birkbeck, University of London, the Refugee Therapy Centre, University of East London, and completed his clinical training at WPF Therapy, University of Roehampton.

He is a registered member of the Foundation for Psychotherapy and Counselling, the British Psychoanalytic Council, the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and adheres to their strict codes of ethics for practice that fall under the UK’s Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care.

Following his first degree in Geography (with specific reference to Asia and Africa) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, Sebastian formally worked as a social and mental health support worker for NHS and private paramedical, homeless youths and psychiatric youths services for fifteen years. His experience of frontline emergency work and his own experience of psychotherapy and counselling inform his approach as a clinician. He specialises in the effects of early childhood, generational and complex trauma on the personality, and in intercultural issues. He has worked in private practice since 2014.