Michael Elwan

A conversation with Michael Elwan

• What led you to choose psychotherapy or counselling as a profession?

  I came to this work through lived and living experience long before I had language for it. From a young age, I was a carer for family members with disability and complex mental health challenges, navigating grief, responsibility, and silence alongside love. Later, I experienced suicide bereavement, migration, and the disorientation that comes with starting again in a new country.
  
  What stayed with me was not only pain, but the question of what helps people feel held when systems fail or words fall short. I chose this profession because I believe care can be done with dignity, humility, and respect for context. Therapy at its best is not about fixing people. It is about creating conditions where something truthful and humane can emerge.

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional development?

  My work is shaped by relational and humanistic traditions, particularly social work ethics, attachment theory, and trauma-informed practice. I am influenced by philosophies that emphasise meaning-making, context, and the relational nature of suffering and healing.
  
  I am also guided by ideas from existential thought, particularly around responsibility, freedom, and how people live with uncertainty, loss, and change. These perspectives remind me to stay curious, to avoid reductionism, and to honour the complexity of human lives without rushing toward answers.

• Which particular aspects of health or the human journey are you interested in?

  I am especially interested in how people carry experiences that were never fully witnessed; grief that had no language, roles assumed too early, identities shaped by survival rather than choice. I am drawn to the spaces where people feel tired, conflicted, or quietly disconnected despite outward competence.
  
  I am also deeply interested in how culture, power, and systems shape emotional life; how migration, caregiving, masculinity, or marginalisation influence how distress is expressed and understood. Much of my work sits at the intersection of personal pain and broader context: migration, caregiving, masculinity, marginalisation. The personal and the structural rarely operate separately.

• What methods do you use?

  For new individual therapy clients, EMDR is the main approach I offer, subject to assessment and suitability. We start by understanding what brings you to therapy, how past experiences and current circumstances affect you, and what you would like to change. Assessment and preparation come before memory processing. I explain the stages so we can make informed decisions together and review the work as we go.
  
  My approach is relational, trauma-informed and culturally responsive. You can use English, Arabic or both. I have completed Level 1 and Level 2 Training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy, and I use Gottman Method Couples Therapy in my work. Couples begin with a four-session assessment. The individual assessment appointments are part of couples work. Where individual work with one partner supports the couples work, I may offer it for a stated purpose and coordinate it with our joint sessions. Both partners need to know and agree, and I check this with each of you on your own. The same disclosure rule applies in both settings. Ongoing individual therapy, including trauma processing or EMDR, is considered case by case with my clinical supervisor.

• When do you think the client will start to feel that progress is being made?

  We agree what you would like to change and review the work together. Progress may involve changes in distress, daily life, relationships or your ability to approach difficult memories. The pace varies, and noticing a change does not mean all concerns are resolved. If the work is not helping or the approach does not suit you, we discuss what needs to change, including whether another practitioner or service would be more suitable.

• How has therapy made a difference in your life?

  Therapy has taught me how to stay present with difficult feelings without being overwhelmed by them. It has helped me recognise patterns shaped by responsibility, loss, and survival, and to relate to them with more compassion.
  
  Perhaps most importantly, therapy has shown me the difference it makes to be witnessed without judgment. That experience shapes how I sit with others: attentive, respectful, slow to interpret, willing to wait.

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

  I value the privilege of being invited into people's inner worlds. There is something deeply human about sitting with someone as they make sense of their story, especially when parts of it have been carried alone for a long time.
  
  I also appreciate the honesty this work demands. Therapy requires humility, curiosity, and the willingness to be changed by what you hear. That keeps the work alive and meaningful for me.

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

  Absolutely. Therapists are human first. There are days when I arrive feeling tired, distracted, or imperfect, like anyone else. What matters is not being flawless, but being present, reflective, and willing to notice what shows up.
  
  I think clients often find relief in knowing they are working with a real person rather than an idealised role.

• What do you think is the most significant problem we face, in the world today?

  One of the most significant challenges is how rarely people feel their experiences are taken seriously by the systems meant to help them. Migration, caregiving, suicide bereavement, family violence, the lived experience of mental health distress: these are still met by services structured around symptoms rather than context.
  
  The result is a quiet, persistent message that the truth of someone's life is somehow inconvenient. Rebuilding spaces where people can be met with dignity and the time to be heard feels increasingly vital.

• Can you share the name of a book, film, song, event or work of art that inspires you?

  Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning continues to resonate with me, not because it offers easy hope, but because it honours the human capacity to find meaning even in suffering. It reminds me that meaning is not something we discover once, but something we keep shaping in relationship with our lives and values.