Online therapy · University and young adults
A steady place to think, whatever the year brings.
The years between school and settled adult life ask a great deal of a person. Online therapy offers a confidential space to make sense of things, one that carries on through terms and vacations, wherever you are in the UK.
How online therapy works
Relational, secure, and held to the same standard
Online therapy is the same work as sitting in a room together, carried over a secure video connection. We work at your pace. There is no fixed script and no imposed agenda; the conversation develops according to what you bring.
You are not hurried towards solutions or asked to override what you feel. You are helped to understand what is happening, why it makes sense, and how you might meet it differently. Over time this can steady how you regulate, widen your perspective and rebuild trust in yourself, so that study, work and relationships feel less like something to brace against.
We do not begin from diagnosis. Where a specialist assessment would help, we will help you think about the right next step. Otherwise, we start from understanding what is happening for you.
By secure video · 50 minutes · weekly or fortnightly by arrangement · wherever you are in the UK
Who you would work with
Freya Aylward
Registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council
Online work with university students and young adults is Freya’s area at KST. These years, when a great deal changes at once and much of it has to be managed alone, are her particular interest.
She came to therapy from the classroom. She qualified as a teacher and spent several years in London’s independent schools, latterly as a deputy designated safeguarding lead and wellbeing specialist, so the school world many students have only just left is one she knows well. At the Tavistock and Portman she trained first in psychoanalytic observation and then in psychological therapies with children, young people and families.
What brings people to therapy
The particular weight of this stage of life
A great deal changes at once in these years: where you live, who is around you, what is asked of you, and how much of it you are meant to manage alone. It is common to look as though you are coping while feeling, privately, a long way from it.
You do not need to arrive with the right words, or a tidy explanation. Much of the work is thinking clearly, out loud, with someone who is properly on your side.
- Workload, and the fear of falling behind
- Loneliness in a crowd: feeling unseen in a place that is meant to be sociable
- Anxiety and low mood, including panic, dread and flatness
- Perfectionism and burnout, where high standards have tipped into something punishing
- Relationships, intimacy and friendship
- Identity, including questions of self, culture, sexuality and difference
- Family relationships shifting as you find your footing at a distance
- Sleep that has come apart
- Alcohol and the culture around it, and what it may be doing to how you feel
- The quiet sense that everyone else was handed a manual you never received
Why online, for these years
The format that fits a life in motion
Continuity
It carries across terms and vacations
You keep the same therapist and the same hour whether you are in halls, home for the vacation or somewhere in between. The work does not restart each term.
Privacy
A session you can take from your own room
Shared houses and halls make privacy hard to find. Online sessions let you meet from a space that is yours, with nowhere to travel to and no one needing to know where you are going.
Reach
Through a move or a placement
A placement in another city, a move home after graduating. A change of address never means beginning again with someone new.
Consent and confidentiality
Your own decision, and your own confidence
If you are 18 or over, you arrange therapy yourself, and no one else needs to be involved. A parent, your university or anyone else hears about it only if you want them to, within the limits below.
What you bring to sessions is confidential, with a few exceptions we explain at the start: if we are seriously worried about your safety or someone else’s, if a child may be at risk, or if the law requires it, we may need to share information, for example with your GP or the emergency services. Wherever it is safe to do so, we would talk it through with you first.
Some students reach us shortly before their eighteenth birthday. Then we follow the same careful approach to consent and confidentiality we use across the practice, in line with professional guidance.
Fees
Fees are discussed in the first conversation, so we can shape an arrangement that fits your situation. We work with young adults funding sessions themselves, and with families funding them together. A small number of reduced-rate places are held each term for those for whom cost is the obstacle.
Therapy may begin through
- You, aged 18 or over, getting in touch directly
- A parent, with your agreement
- A GP or a university wellbeing service
If this is urgent
Kensington Square Therapy is not a crisis service. If you or your child is in immediate danger, call 999.
Show helplinesHide helplines
If you need help right now
If you or your child is in immediate danger
999Call 999
If either you or your child is in a mental health crisis
NHS 111England, Scotland and Wales: call 111 and choose the mental-health option. Northern Ireland: call Lifeline on 0808 808 8000
If your child is under 19 and needs to talk to someone themselves
Childline0800 1111
If you are worried that a child is being harmed or is at risk
NSPCC Helpline0808 800 5000
If you would prefer to text rather than speak
ShoutText SHOUT to 85258
If you or someone you are worried about needs someone to talk to
Samaritans116 123
Begin
Wondering whether therapy could help?
A short first conversation commits you to nothing. Every enquiry is handled personally, and we aim to reply within one working day.