DR RACHEL LEE

I am a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with over 20 years of experience working within the NHS. I love using my skills and experience to help others change their lives. During my time in the NHS I held a range of leadership positions, including being the lead for an outpatient Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Service. My most recent role was as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Joint Clinical Lead for a service for people with complex physical and mental health difficulties. I left the NHS in October 2022 and now work entirely freelance. As well as running North Star Psychology Ltd, I am an associate with Healthy You Ltd, where my work has included being part of the team delivering programmes for aspiring leaders in the NHS and collaborating to develop the MindYourself app.

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I completed my degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and then completed my clinical psychology doctorate (D Clin Psy) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London. I have worked in both community and hospital settings, helping people with a broad range of complex mental health difficulties ( for example, trauma, anxiety disorders, depression, psychosis, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, self-harming behaviours) overcome their difficulties, achieve their goals and rebuild their lives. A lot of my therapeutic work involves helping people with trauma symptoms, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), using Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy, an evidence-based recommended treatment for PTSD, which is recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). I have used EMDR to successfully treat clients who have experienced single traumatic events (such as car accidents, assaults, complicated childbirth/ birth trauma, witnessing others in a life-threatening situation, and traumatic grief experiences) and also those who have endured prolonged trauma (for example, childhood abuse and domestic violence). The other strand of my work involves using CBT, ACT or DBT to help people change unhelpful patterns of behaviour related to difficult or distressing thoughts and/or emotions. I see people with low mood and a range of anxiety disorders as well as problems with emotional instability and interpersonal difficulties.

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Clients often come to me for help with events that they have felt unable to speak about with others and often the event happened many years ago. It is a great privilege to be able help people change the way they feel and think about these highly distressing events, that may have been haunting them for many years.  I deliver therapy with kindness, warmth, care and compassion. This enables the people I work with to feel safe within therapy, so that they can overcome their difficulties, enjoy the present and plan for the future.

 

I will work with you to identify your values and goals and these will guide our treatment plan. I will take the time to understand how your current difficulties take you away from having the life you wish for and I will help you understand how these difficulties connect with your past experiences, whether these are recent or historical. After forming a shared understanding of your difficulties, we will discuss different treatment options, so that you can choose the most appropriate, evidence-based therapy for your needs.