About Me: Who I Am and My Specialties | Doctor Mabin Psychology

I became a psychologist in a way that felt quite gradual. There was no single moment where everything suddenly became clear, no dramatic certainty that this was exactly who I was meant to be. It was more a collection of experiences that stayed with me longer than I expected them to. Conversations. Certain losses. Certain people. Moments where I noticed how much human beings carry internally while still trying to continue with ordinary life.

And I think over time, what stayed with me most was this idea that people do not simply carry symptoms or diagnoses. They carry stories. Histories. Relationships. Versions of themselves that developed slowly over years, sometimes without them fully realising it.

Some stories are very visible. Grief, anxiety, fear, shame, loneliness. Other stories are harder to notice because people have spent so long trying to function around them that they almost disappear into the background of daily life. But even then, they continue to shape how a person sees themselves, how they relate to others, how they experience closeness, conflict, ambition, disappointment, hope.

So my work has never really been about reducing someone down to a label or a set of symptoms. I think what interests me more is how all these different parts of a person’s life interact with one another. How certain experiences continue long after the moment itself has passed. How some stories stay with us long after the stage has dimmed. And how making sense of them can slowly change the way we live with what came before, and how we step into what comes next.

A lot of what shaped me clinically did not come purely from textbooks or academic settings, although those experiences were valuable too. It came from sitting with people over long periods of time and noticing how human beings try to survive emotionally. Sometimes through avoidance. Sometimes through perfectionism. Sometimes through humour, withdrawal, anger, achievement, caretaking. Often through patterns that once protected them but no longer fit the life they want to live now.

And I think because of that, I have never been especially interested in presenting myself as someone who has all the answers. Therapy, for me, is not about placing myself above another person as the expert who explains their life back to them. It’s more relational than that. More collaborative. Because often people already know far more about themselves than they realise, but those thoughts can become buried under fear, noise, self criticism, or simply years of feeling unheard.

What I try to offer is a space where those experiences can gradually become clearer. A place where a person does not have to immediately perform wellness or certainty. Where confusion can exist without shame. Because I think clarity often arrives quite slowly. Sometimes people come to therapy wanting solutions, but what they actually need first is permission to pause long enough to hear themselves properly.

As someone who has wrestled with uncertainty and self doubt myself, I think I carry that awareness into the room. Not in a way that centres my own experience, but in a way that helps me stay connected to the reality that being human can feel overwhelming at times. People are trying to hold together work, relationships, expectations, grief, identity, exhaustion, childhood experiences, fears about the future, while still appearing functional to the outside world. That takes an enormous amount of effort.

Outside of clinical work, I find myself drawn repeatedly to storytelling. Literature, photography, gaming, cinema. I think stories allow us to encounter parts of ourselves indirectly, sometimes more honestly than we can in ordinary conversation. A game, a photograph, a scene from a novel can suddenly place us in contact with something we had struggled to articulate for years. And I think that is part of why these things stay meaningful to me personally as well as professionally.

At the centre of my work is a fairly simple belief. That people deserve to feel seen in their full complexity. That healing does not happen through forcing ourselves to become someone entirely different. And that a person’s story can begin to feel easier to live with once it becomes clearer, more connected, and less hidden from view.

Reaching out for therapy can feel uncertain. Sometimes people wait a long time before allowing themselves to even consider it seriously. But I think there is something significant about becoming curious about your own life again. About wanting to understand yourself more honestly, rather than simply pushing yourself harder to cope.

Because often the most meaningful changes do not begin with certainty. They begin with someone finally feeling able to ask the questions they had been carrying alone for a very long time. I’ve said this often during my teaching at the university. Begin your journey with questions, not answers.

I completed my doctoral training in Counselling Psychology in the UK and have been registered with the HCPC as a Practitioner Psychologist since 2018. But I think qualifications, on their own, only tell a very small part of the story. What shaped me more deeply was what happened after the training rooms, after the lectures, after the placements. Sitting with people in very difficult parts of their lives and slowly learning how much complexity exists underneath what first appears on the surface.

Since qualifying, most of my work has been within the NHS, where I currently work as a Principal Psychologist. And I think one thing that has stayed consistent throughout my career is this curiosity about how psychological work can become more useful, more human, and more connected to the actual realities people live with day to day.

Part of that work involved contributing to the Oxford CBT-E model for eating disorders, which was a meaningful experience because it allowed me to think carefully about how psychological theories actually translate into lived treatment. I also led the development of a digital treatment pathway for children and young people struggling with emotional regulation difficulties. And I think what stayed important throughout that process was trying to create something that people could genuinely engage with, rather than something that simply looked good theoretically.

Over the years, I have worked across a wide range of clinical presentations, including eating disorders, trauma, PTSD, personality difficulties, affective disorders, attachment related difficulties, ADHD, and ASD. But even then, I try to hold those diagnoses lightly. Because two people can arrive with the same diagnosis and still experience themselves, their relationships, and their suffering in completely different ways.

So my approach has always been less about forcing people into fixed categories and more about trying to build a fuller psychological picture of who they are. How they cope. What they learned emotionally growing up. What they avoid. What they long for. What feels unbearable for them internally. What helps them feel safe.

Clinically, my work draws from several different therapeutic models, including Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, CBT, MBT, DBT, and Solution Focused Brief Therapy, alongside additional specialist training in eating disorder treatments. But in practice, therapy rarely feels as neat as theoretical models sometimes suggest. Real people do not divide themselves into separate chapters. Thoughts, emotions, relationships, memory, identity, fear, attachment, physical health, culture, family experiences, they all interact constantly.

And I think because of that, good therapy often requires the ability to tolerate uncertainty for a while. To hold onto details that may initially seem disconnected or unimportant until eventually a clearer picture begins to emerge.

Alongside individual therapy, I also work closely with families, particularly when people are trying to make sense of complex emotional or neurodevelopmental difficulties. Often families are carrying their own confusion, guilt, helplessness, or exhaustion, while trying very hard to support someone they care about. Sometimes what helps most is creating enough space for everyone to begin speaking more openly and thinking together differently.

At the centre of my work is a fairly consistent belief that psychology should feel accessible rather than distant or overly clinical. Human beings are complicated, and emotional suffering rarely fits neatly into predefined boxes. But I also think people are far more adaptive and resilient than they often realise when they first arrive in therapy.

My role is not to position myself as someone who has complete certainty about another person’s life. It is to help people think more clearly about themselves, their relationships, and the stories they have been carrying for years. Because once those stories become more visible and more connected, they often become easier to live with, and easier to understand.