Ms Sanaz Bassiri

A conversation with Sanaz Bassiri

• What led you to choose psychotherapy or counselling as a profession?

  During a 25-year corporate career in tech transformation leadership alongside 20 years as a psychologist, I watched the modern world fracture people’s sense of self. I saw that workplace burnout or identity crises are rarely just skill gaps; they are deeply tied to a person's broader life story.
  
  Wearing many hats, as a practitioner, corporate leader, partner, and parent, made me intimately familiar with the heavy mental load of keeping it all together when your biology, career, or family dynamics shift underneath you.
  
  I focus on private practice to offer a real, practical space where you don’t have to navigate these messy middles alone.

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional development?

  I operate at the intersection of psychodynamic theory and existential philosophy. I believe our present-day anxieties and recurring habits are often driven by internal "mental maps" forged early in life. Real transformation requires exploring the uncomfortable, ambiguous spaces of transition.
  
  To anchor this deep philosophy into practical outcomes, I integrate structured, evidence-based tools like EMDR, DBT, CBT, and Mentalisation-Based Treatment (MBT).

• Which particular aspects of health or the human journey are you interested in?

  I am drawn to the disorienting "in-between" chapters of life where an old identity no longer fits, but the next one hasn’t yet formed. My specific areas of focus include:
  
  - helping professionals recover from intense career burnout,
  - supporting women through the invisible physical and emotional loads of perimenopause,
  - navigating the profound identity shifts of matrescence and early parenthood, and
  - guiding adults coming to terms with a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis as their lifelong coping mechanisms begin to buckle.

• What methods do you use?

  I blend insight-oriented therapy with highly practical, evidence-based frameworks tailored to your specific needs:
  
  - Psychodynamic Therapy: Unpacking beneath-the-surface patterns and how past experiences shape current distress.
  
  - EMDR: Reprocessing distressing memories or acute anxiety so they lose their painful emotional charge.
  
  - DBT, CBT & MBT: Building immediate coping strategies, improving emotional regulation, and rewriting unhelpful thought patterns.
  
  - Executive Coaching: Using my Organisational Psychology background to help you navigate corporate politics, intense leadership demands, and major career pivots.

• When do you think the client will start to feel that progress is being made?

  Progress varies completely depending on your rhythm. Some people arrive having seen multiple therapists over their lives, while others are stepping into a therapy room for the very first time. Because of this, progress isn’t a fixed timeline, it is entirely dictated by how we build our working relationship.

• How has therapy made a difference in your life?

  Therapy gave me the space to step out of the relentless "doing" mode of a high-pressure corporate career and move into "being." It helped me safely navigate my own messy middles, unpack my mental maps, and integrate my professional identity with my roles as a parent and partner. Experiencing therapy from the client’s chair taught me the profound value of the therapeutic alliance. I learned firsthand how a trusted, secure relationship can act as a mirror, allowing us to see what relational patterns unconsciously emerge in real-time so we can safely unpack and reshape them.

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

  I enjoy the unique position of being outside a situation, which allows me to look at it objectively (as one can) and problem-solve with a person without the surrounding noise. I love the balance the role demands: one moment we are practically dissecting a complex mental map to find a way through it, and the next, I am simply holding a quiet space for someone to safely process their emotions, untethered from the expectations of their daily life.
  
  It is incredibly rewarding to alternate between active collaborator and a steady place for someone to just "be."

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

  Do I!? Absolutely - I have curly hair!
  Balancing a private practice, and the shifting dynamics of family life means my days can get just as messy as anyone else's.
  
  I have tech fatigue, moments of overwhelm, and days where keeping all the plates spinning feels incredibly taxing. I don't sit in the therapist's chair as a flawless expert who has it all figured out; I sit there as a human being who actively practices the exact boundaries, self-compassion, and mental strategies that I share with my clients.

• What do you think is the most significant problem we face, in the world today?

  The relentless, algorithmic pace of modern life and the pressure to constantly perform. We live in a hyper-connected digital landscape that rewards speed and oversimplification, leaving little room for pause, nuance, or genuine stillness. This constant overstimulation fractures our sense of self and could alienate us from one another.
  
  Crucially, it has eroded our capacity for robust conversations; we have lost the patience to truly hear the opposing side, diminishing the deep compassion and empathy required to understand perspectives different from our own.

• Can you share the name of a book, film, song, event or work of art that inspires you?

  Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946)
  Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (1997)
  The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)
  
  There are plenty of quotes in these books. I guess the underlying theme that connects these books is the pursuit of meaning, identity, and human worth in the face of suffering and external adversity.