Joy
Meaning & motivation
When the things that used to matter have gone quiet, and you want to feel like yourself again.
Counselling & psychotherapy · London & online
Whatever you’re carrying, there’s room for it here.
Talk to someone who gets it. A calm, confidential space to make sense of anxiety, low mood, grief, anger — or a feeling you can’t quite name yet.
Book a first session
Free 20-minute intro call · usually a reply within a day
Every feeling belongs
Feelings aren’t problems to be fixed. They’re signals worth listening to.
The wheel is a real tool used in therapy: each colour is a core emotion, and the more intense the feeling, the deeper its hue. Nothing on it is wrong to feel.
Together we make sense of what yours are telling you — and at the centre sits settled: the calm, regulated place we work towards, even when there’s no strong feeling at all.
A space that’s yours
Two chairs, a closed door, and an hour that belongs entirely to you.
Therapy is confidential and unhurried. You won’t be diagnosed at, rushed, or handed a worksheet. You’ll be listened to — properly — by someone trained to help you understand yourself.
Sessions run for 50 minutes, in person in Stoke Newington or over video anywhere in the UK.
What we help with
People come to Havenoak for all sorts of reasons. Here are a few.
Trust
Relationships & connection
Patterns that keep repeating, closeness that feels hard, or rebuilding trust after it was broken.
Fear
Anxiety & worry
A mind that races ahead, a body that stays on alert, panic that arrives without warning.
Sadness
Low mood & depression
Heaviness that has outstayed its welcome — when getting through the day takes everything you have.
Grief
Loss & bereavement
Grief has no timetable. A space to carry what — and who — you have lost, at your own pace.
Anger
Anger & frustration
Anger that surprises you, or that you have learned to swallow. Both are worth understanding.
Anticipation
Change & big decisions
Standing at a threshold — a move, a relationship, a diagnosis, a version of your life ending or starting.
Settled
Flat, numb, or not sure
Sometimes there is no strong feeling at all — just flatness, or a sense of nothing. That belongs here too.
Not sure where you fit? That’s completely normal — start with a free call.
How it works
Starting is simpler than it feels from the outside.
- 01
A free intro call
Twenty minutes on the phone, no cost and no commitment — a chance to hear how I work and see if it feels right.
- 02
Your first session
We start wherever you are. There is nothing you need to prepare, and no feeling that is too small or too much to bring.
- 03
Weekly, at your pace
Most people come once a week. There is no fixed number of sessions — we review together, and you decide how far to go.
Who you’d be talking to
I’m Ella Rourke — a therapist who believes people aren’t broken.
I’m an integrative counsellor and a registered member of the BACP, with fifteen years alongside people through anxiety, loss, burnout and the ordinary hard patches of a life.
More about me and how I work →
From the journal
Gentle, practical writing on the things people actually bring.
A first step
The hardest part is often the first message. When you’re ready, we’re here.
Free 20-minute intro call · In person in London or online · Evening appointments available