Matthew Benjamin

My name is Matthew Benjamin and I'm a psychotherapeutic counsellor, and a Registered Member of the BACP.

I've studied an MSc in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy and Compassionate Inquiry under Dr Gabor Maté, and I hold an MA Music Entrepreneur degree.

People come to me with anxiety, depression, addiction and recovery, grief and loss, relationships, work, stress and low self-esteem — and quite often with something they've been carrying quietly for years and have run out of people to say it to. No issue is too small or too big.

Before this

I worked in the music industry for over thirty years before I trained as a therapist. Touring, studios, labels, unsociable hours, long stretches away, and the particular strangeness of a working life that doesn't run to a fixed shape.

That matters here for one reason. A lot of what people bring me is bound up with how they work, and I don't need it explained to me. The gap between how a career looks from the outside and how it feels from the inside is territory I know well.

Why I trained

The demands of that occupation affected my well being in a lot of areas of my life, and I sought out therapy over fifteen years ago.

The work I did then, and have continued to do with my own therapist since, shaped me and guided me. It's the reason I ended up doing this. Not a career plan — it worked on me first.

Recovery

I've also been in recovery for eleven years.

I don't lead with it and I won't make your work about mine. But if that's part of what you're bringing, you won't have to explain the shape of it from scratch — and you won't get a lecture from me either.

What helped me was a combination of therapy and twelve step meetings. That isn't the only route and I won't tell you it is. It does mean I know the difference between deciding to cut back and not being able to.

What the work is like

We'll agree together what you'd want to be different, and what's been stopping you getting there. We'll look at how you think, feel and behave — towards yourself, towards other people, in the world — and where those patterns came from.

I won't tell you what to do. I'll ask a lot of questions, some of them uncomfortable, and I'll be straight with you.

It's work, it's hard, and it's painful at times. It also changes what you're able to carry.

Contact me for availability and for a first conversation.