“I used to cope with everything. Now I don’t know what’s happened to me.”
That feeling is familiar to many of the people who come to Sinéad Lyons. Something in life has shifted and the way they used to manage no longer seems to work. They may feel overwhelmed, anxious or stuck, have lost their sense of direction, or simply no longer recognise themselves.
Sinéad is an integrative Counsellor and Therapeutic Coach offering individual counselling in Buckhurst Hill. She has a particular interest in helping people through significant life transitions, including menopause and perimenopause, children leaving home, retirement, redundancy and career change. She also works with the anxiety, stress, loss of confidence and sense of disconnection that can accompany these changes.
Her approach brings counselling and coaching together where helpful. This means there can be space to understand how you got here, while also beginning to work out what you want now and how you might move towards it.
Sometimes life changes gradually. At other times, something happens that removes one of the roles around which you’ve built much of your identity.
Your youngest child leaves home. You retire. You’re made redundant after decades in the same career. Your relationship changes. Your body feels different during menopause. Or perhaps you reach your 40s or 50s and realise that, despite doing all the things you thought you were supposed to do, you’re no longer sure what you want from the next part of your life.
You might find yourself thinking:
What’s my purpose now? Why can’t I just get on with things? Why am I anxious about everything? What do I actually want?
Sometimes it is hard even to explain what has changed. You just know you feel “off” but can’t explain why.
Sinéad particularly enjoys working with people at this point: helping you clear some of the noise, understand what has changed and gradually find a sense of direction again.
Menopause and perimenopause can affect much more than physical health. Anxiety, brain fog, changes in mood, irritability, reduced confidence and feeling unlike yourself can all become difficult to make sense of, particularly when they coincide with other changes in your life.
Perhaps your children are becoming more independent, your relationship is changing, you’re questioning your career or you’re caring for ageing parents at the same time. It can become difficult to separate what is hormonal, what is emotional and what is simply the impact of having so much happening at once.
Sinéad has a particular interest in supporting the emotional and psychological impact of menopause. She has completed menopause-specific training with Embers and with Yinstinct. Her practice is informed by British Menopause Society guidance on CBT for menopause and hot flushes; she works from a menopause-informed perspective, and is an affiliate subscriber of the British Menopause Society
Her role isn’t to diagnose or medically treat menopause. Your GP or another appropriate healthcare professional can support you with medical symptoms and treatment. Counselling provides somewhere to work with the emotional side: the anxiety, overwhelm, changes in confidence and relationships, and the unsettling feeling that you are no longer quite yourself.
You may have known for years that your children would eventually leave. That doesn’t necessarily prepare you for how it feels when they do.
There can be pride and excitement alongside a genuine sense of loss. A home that has revolved around family life suddenly feels very different, and the role that occupied so much of your time and emotional energy has changed.
That can leave an uncomfortable question: What do I do with myself now?
For some people, this transition brings a much bigger question about identity. If you’ve spent years being needed by other people, you may find yourself wondering, “When did I lose myself?”
Sinéad works with people experiencing this stage of life, particularly when it coincides with menopause, relationship changes or questions about purpose and direction. Counselling can give you room to acknowledge what you’re losing while also beginning to discover what you might want from the years ahead.
Losing a job isn’t only a financial or practical event. If you’ve spent decades building a career, work may be deeply connected to your identity, routine, relationships and sense of usefulness.
Redundancy can therefore leave you feeling shocked, angry, frightened or strangely untethered. Retirement can have a similar effect, even when you’ve been looking forward to it.
Without the structure of work, you may suddenly wonder who you are without your job title or what gives you a reason to get up in the morning.
Sinéad’s combination of counselling and coaching can be particularly useful here. Counselling gives you room to process what you’ve lost and understand what the change has stirred up. Coaching can then become part of the work if you want to begin identifying priorities, possibilities and practical ways forward.
It’s not about rushing you into the next thing. Sometimes you need to understand where you are before you can decide where you want to go.
People don’t always come to counselling with a clearly defined problem. Sometimes the starting point is simply: everything feels like too much.
You might feel anxious about things you previously handled easily, struggle to make decisions, find it difficult to switch off or notice that your motivation has disappeared. Perhaps you’ve talked to friends, tried to reason your way through it, read advice online or even asked AI for answers, but you still don’t feel any clearer.
When you can’t stop overthinking everything or can’t switch your mind off, trying harder to think your way out of the problem can sometimes create even more noise.
Sinéad helps you slow things down and understand what may be sitting underneath the anxiety. Her work can include exploring the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviour as well as practical strategies that can help you feel calmer and more able to cope.
And you don’t need one enormous trauma or crisis to justify coming to counselling. Sometimes feeling low when nothing seems obviously wrong is reason enough to seek some support.
You may have spent years being capable, productive and dependable. Then suddenly — or perhaps very gradually — you reach a point where you simply don’t have the same capacity anymore.
You feel tired, irritable, foggy or detached. Things that used to feel manageable take far more effort. You may wonder why you’re struggling when you’ve always been the person who could cope.
These can be signs of burnout, particularly when you’ve been under pressure for a long time. Stress can also have a significant impact on physical as well as emotional health.
Therapy can help you understand what has been draining you rather than treating your exhaustion as another problem you should be able to overcome through sheer effort. If burnout is part of what is happening, Sinéad can also help you think about what needs to change so that recovery becomes more than simply taking a break and returning to exactly the same pressures.
One of Sinéad’s main areas of interest is helping people who feel they have lost their sense of purpose.
This doesn’t necessarily mean finding a dramatic new career, moving abroad or completely reinventing your life. Often it starts much more quietly: working out what matters to you now.
If much of your identity has been tied to parenting, work, a relationship or looking after other people, it can take time to rediscover your own priorities. You may have become so accustomed to meeting other people’s expectations that you’re no longer sure which choices are genuinely yours.
Sinéad’s therapeutic coaching can complement counselling at this stage. Together, you can explore what is important to you, what may be keeping you stuck and what realistic changes could move you towards a life that feels more fulfilling.
The aim isn’t to hand you somebody else’s answer. It’s to help you find greater clarity about your answer.
Sinéad describes the process as a little like getting a new pair of glasses and being able to see things differently again.
Her style is warm, grounded and thoughtful, with room for humour as well as serious conversation. She listens carefully, but she isn’t someone who will simply sit back and nod.
Clients who choose Sinéad often want someone who will think with them. She may gently challenge something, offer another perspective or help you notice a pattern that is difficult to see when you’re caught in the middle of it.
Her own maturity and life experience help her remain open-minded and non-judgemental, while her therapeutic and coaching training means there can also be practical tools and techniques where these are useful.
The aim isn’t simply to understand yourself intellectually. It’s for that understanding to eventually make a difference to how you live your life.
You don’t need to decide whether you need counselling or coaching before you arrive.
Sinéad is trained in both, and the balance can depend on what you need.
Counselling may involve exploring why you feel or respond in particular ways, understanding the influence of earlier experiences and making sense of what is happening emotionally.
Coaching tends to look more towards where you want to go: clarifying priorities, identifying what is getting in the way and considering practical steps towards change.
For someone navigating a major life transition, both can be valuable. You may need space to understand what you’ve lost before you’re ready to think about what comes next.
Sinéad can bring the two together rather than expecting you to fit neatly into one or the other.
Sinéad is an integrative counsellor, meaning she draws from different therapeutic approaches according to the person sitting in front of her rather than working from one fixed method.
Her work is influenced by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), CBT, Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, psychodynamic thinking and somatic-informed practice.
In everyday terms, that might mean looking at the connection between your thoughts, feelings and behaviour; noticing whether earlier experiences are influencing how you respond today; exploring the mind-body connection when you’re stressed or overwhelmed; and identifying the values and priorities you want your life to reflect.
Some of the work is about insight. Some may be practical. What matters is finding an approach that helps you, rather than trying to fit you into a particular model of therapy.
Before becoming a therapist, Sinéad spent 28 years working in healthcare. This gave her a strong appreciation of safety, trust, confidentiality and professional ethics, as well as an understanding of the close relationship between physical and emotional wellbeing. She also spent time working for a mental health charity.
Her move into counselling and coaching came from seeing first-hand how much it matters when someone feels properly listened to and put at ease. Her own experience of making a significant change in midlife also helped shape her interest in supporting people who find themselves questioning their direction and wondering what they want from the next stage of life.
That combination of healthcare, counselling and coaching contributes to a style that is thoughtful and psychologically informed but also practical and forward-looking.
Sinéad holds a Postgraduate Diploma (Level 7) in Integrative Counselling & Coaching and a Postgraduate Certificate in Counselling and Intercultural Counselling. She is a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP) and an affiliate subscriber of the British Menopause Society.
Her additional training and professional development includes a Diploma in Life Coaching, Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Anxiety Management, CBT with the British Menopause Society covering menopause and hot flushes, menopause-informed practice, Cruse Bereavement Care training, culturally informed counselling, sex and porn addiction training, drug and alcohol addiction psychology, neurodiversity-informed practice and mind-body/somatic-informed practice.
Sinéad offers 50-minute face-to-face sessions at Cherry Tree Therapy Centre in Buckhurst Hill.
Availability: Monday to Friday, 8am–5pm
Fee: £60 per session
Concessions: A limited number of concessionary spaces are available
Language: English
Feeling overwhelmed, unable to cope or unlike yourself can be frightening. It doesn’t mean you need to arrive with an explanation for what is happening. Sinéad can help you slow things down, begin making sense of what you’re experiencing and work towards feeling calmer and more grounded.
Yes. You don’t need to have experienced one defining event to benefit from counselling. Sometimes the ground has shifted gradually through changes, pressures and losses until you realise you’re simply not feeling like yourself anymore.
Yes. Sinéad is informed by the British Menopause Society when addressing symptoms such as anxiety and hot flushes. Counselling can support the emotional and psychological impact of menopause and perimenopause, including anxiety, mood changes, brain fog, relationship difficulties and changes in your sense of self. Physical symptoms and medical treatment should also be discussed with your GP or another appropriate healthcare professional.
Yes. Redundancy can affect far more than work. It can shake your confidence, routine, financial security, identity and sense of purpose. Counselling can give you somewhere to process what has happened, while Sinéad’s coaching experience can also help when you’re ready to begin thinking about what you want next.
Yes. When parenting has been a central part of your identity for many years, children leaving home can create a genuine sense of loss and uncertainty. Counselling can help you adjust to that change while beginning to explore who you are and what you want from this next stage of your life.
That’s a perfectly good place to start. You don’t need a diagnosis or a clear explanation before coming to counselling. “I know I’m not okay, but I don’t know why” is enough.
No. Sinéad is warm and non-judgemental, but gentle challenge is also part of the way she works. She will share what she notices and help you consider different perspectives rather than simply agreeing with everything you say.
There is no set length. Some people want a relatively small number of sessions to work through something specific, while others benefit from longer-term counselling. You and Sinéad can consider what is useful as the work progresses. Her aim is ultimately to help you reach a point where you have the understanding, confidence and tools to move forward without needing therapy.
You don’t have to wait until you’ve reached breaking point, and you don’t need to know exactly what needs to change.
Perhaps you’re navigating menopause, retirement, redundancy or children leaving home. Maybe you’re overwhelmed by anxiety or recovering from burnout. Or perhaps the simplest explanation is that you’ve lost your sense of direction and want to feel like yourself again.
Sinéad offers a combination of understanding and forward movement: space to make sense of where you are, alongside support to work out where you want to go next.
If you would like to explore counselling with Sinéad, contact Cherry Tree Therapy Centre and we can help you arrange your first session.