About
The Women's Therapy Practice
Our Story
The Women's Therapy Practice was founded in 2022 by
Dr Liza Messing,
Consultant Clinical Psychologist.
My desire in founding The Women's Therapy Practice is to support women to live
flourishing lives.
My focus is to help women to understand the impact that society's expectations of us have on our relationships with ourselves and with others. I am interested in how this impacts on us both personally and professionally; how we can find ourselves feeling unexpectedly limited, burdened, frustrated and small.
During my 20+ years of working in the NHS I became aware of the hidden cost of these expectations on women's mental health. I noticed how often women's suffering and distress becomes pathologised. I watched as we accepted women receiving diagnoses for conditions that seemed to me to largely result from distress in relation to internalised (largely unconscious) patriarchal expectations of ourselves.
I saw that these internalised expectations created patterns of relating to ourselves and others that frequently run counter to our own interests and ability to live flourishing lives.
Supporting women to live full lives - professionally, emotionally, creatively and relationally - is now a driving passion for me. It is a joy for me to join with other women within WTP to do this work.
Our Mission Statement
Supporting women to flourish – personally & professionally.
Supporting you to flourish is foundational to all the work we do. It is the beating heart of our practice and means that we will:
· Honour the ways that you have survived and what you have managed.
. Celebrate what you have become and are becoming.
· Hold the needs of your body in mind and support you to build a loving partnership with yourself.
· Acknowledge how women's experience can be restricted and hold in mind how that shows up for you.
· Give you permission to find a fuller sense of yourself.
· Create deep safety to allow you to experience both your strength and your softness.
· Create space so that you can hold yourself lightly, respectfully and tenderly.
· Support you to reconnect with joy, creativity and meaning.
· Allow the parts of you that may have been crushed to become more fully alive.
· Enable you to do this work at your own pace.
Liza Messing, Leanne Harper, Ellen Wade.
Our Team
Dr Liza Messing
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
& WTP Founder & Director
Dr Liza Messing offers therapy and coaching to high achieving women
who feel as though they are hitting brick walls...She also offers clinical supervision to mental health professionals.
Dr Leanne Harper
Clinical Psychologist
& WTP Associate
Dr Leanne Harper specialises in providing therapy to professional women in their 20's and 30's who struggle with their relationships with themselves and others and would like support managing work pressures.
Ellen Wade
Cognitive Analytic Therapist, Psychotherapist, & WTP Associate
Ellen Wade specialises in working with women who are at a turning point in their lives and are desiring reflective space for focussed understanding to actively improve their relationship with themselves and others.