My name is Pavan
The Connected Self Therapy was founded to be a space where we can come back into relationship with ourselves – connect back with our emotions, our bodies, our needs and the parts of us that we may have learnt to disconnect from along the way.
Therapy is the space where you can understand your anxiety, notice where you feel the overwhelm, or what has caused burn out. It is here that you will be supported, life can bring challenges within our relationships or simply feeling stuck and not knowing the direction in which to take the next step towards. On the outside life can look like we have it all figured out, but internally there is a sense that something doesn’t feel right. I understand all of this; I’ve also experienced it and understand the way it can impact my life and my relationship to myself and pleasure.
My approach goes beyond simply talking about what is happening.
I work with the body, as I believe our experiences are held not only in our thoughts and memories, but they live in the body and the nervous system. You may already notice how your body communicates what you haven’t yet been able to verbalise – through tension, shutting down, restlessness, overwhelm, numbness or a feeling that something just isn’t right.
Therapy with me is an invitation to become curious about all of this.
Rather than asking “What’s wrong with me?”, we begin to understand “What happened to me, what did I learn, and what has helped me survive?”
Over time, this can create space for something different: greater choice, deeper self-trust and a stronger connection to who you are beneath the expectations, adaptations and protective patterns you have carried.
There isn’t one way to do therapy because there isn’t one way to be human.
My work is integrative and draws from person-centred therapy, Compassionate Inquiry, EMDR, somatic and nervous-system-informed approaches, alongside my wider training and experience. But I don’t believe therapy should be about applying techniques to you. Instead, we find a way of working that responds to who you are and what you need.
Sometimes our sessions may involve talking and making sense of your experiences. At other times, we might slow down and listen to what your body is communicating, work with memories or emotions that continue to feel present, explore younger or protective parts of yourself, or simply make space for something that has never had the opportunity to be fully felt or expressed.
I also don’t see our struggles as existing separately from the world around us. Our families, relationships, culture, race, gender, sexuality, class, neurodivergence, faith and the systems we live within can all shape our experiences and the ways we learn to belong, protect ourselves and understand who we are.
My practice is therefore grounded in an anti-oppressive and culturally curious approach. I want therapy to be somewhere we can explore not only your internal world, but the wider experiences that have shaped it without reducing everything you experience to something that needs to be fixed within you.
At the heart of my work is a belief that many of the patterns we struggle with once made sense. People pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, shutting down, overthinking, self-criticism or disconnecting from our bodies can all develop as ways of keeping us safe, connected or accepted.
We don’t need to fight those parts of ourselves.
We can become curious about them, understand what they have been protecting, and begin to create new ways of being.
For me, therapy isn’t about becoming a better version of yourself.
It’s about becoming more connected to the self that is already there.
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