Dr Andreas Vassiliou

Dr Andreas Vassiliou is an HCPC-registered counselling psychologist, UKCP-registered existential psychotherapist and BPS-registered clinical supervisor with over 15 years of clinical experience in the United Kingdom and internationally. He offers short-term and longer-term online psychotherapy and psychological therapy to adults in the UK and across the world.

Dr Vassiliou works with people experiencing anxiety, depression and low mood, relationship difficulties, grief and loss, questions of identity and sexuality, low self-worth, work-related stress and burnout, and recurring emotional or relational patterns. He has a particular interest in working with LGBTQ+ clients and with people who are seeking not only relief from immediate distress, but also a deeper understanding of the conflicts and repetitions that continue to shape their lives and relationships.

Certain questions often emerge in this kind of work: Why do some difficulties continue to return, even when we understand them intellectually? Why might we find ourselves repeating similar patterns in our relationships, choices or ways of responding? What might anxiety, low mood or another persistent symptom be expressing beyond the wish to make it disappear?

People often do not begin therapy with clear answers to these questions or with a clear understanding of what is troubling them. Beginning therapy can itself feel unfamiliar. Dr Vassiliou therefore offers a thoughtful and respectful setting in which each person can begin with whatever feels most pressing, without needing to have everything formulated in advance. Through speaking and being listened to carefully, experiences that initially feel confused, contradictory or difficult to name may gradually begin to take on a different meaning.

This way of working reflects Dr Vassiliou’s grounding in existential psychotherapy and psychoanalytic thinking, including a Lacanian orientation. Rather than applying the same standardised method to every person, he attends to each individual’s particular history, language and way of relating to themselves, to others and to the world. Symptoms are approached not only as difficulties to be removed, but also as possible expressions of conflicts, questions or experiences that have not yet found a clearer form in words.

Therapy can therefore become a space in which difficult experiences are explored at a pace appropriate to the individual. By paying attention to what repeatedly returns in a person’s thoughts, relationships and choices, the work may allow previously unclear sources of distress to be understood differently and create the possibility of responding to them in new ways.

Dr Vassiliou has worked across private practice, the NHS, occupational health, multidisciplinary mental health services and higher education. He previously served as Assistant Professor and Professional Practice Lead on the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology at Regent’s University London and currently provides clinical supervision to postgraduate psychology trainees. Alongside his HCPC and UKCP registrations, he is a chartered psychologist and registered supervisor with the British Psychological Society.

Sessions are available online via Zoom.