Hannah Pemberton
Young adults in transition: post-university, post-breakup, post-promotion
Hannah Pemberton works with people in the years where everything that was given gets handed back for review. That is most of her caseload: clients in their twenties and early thirties who have done what they were supposed to do, found themselves at a desk with the door closed, and started to notice that the room is wrong.
The work
Her work is open-ended and patient. She does not offer a six-week protocol.
The first session is unstructured; she will ask what has brought you and then sit with whatever answer you give for the full fifty minutes. Most of her clients meet her weekly for between six months and two years.
Background and training
Hannah read English at Bristol, taught secondary English for three years, then trained as a counsellor at the Tavistock and at Goldsmiths. She holds an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies and a BACP accreditation. Before joining Field & Frame she was the lead counsellor at a state sixth-form college in Hackney for five years.
What she works with
She is at her best with the kind of client whose life looks fine on the outside. Recent graduates, early-career professionals, people who have just been promoted into a job they did not really want, people who have just left a long relationship. Her room is one of the few places where they are allowed to ask whether they actually want any of it.
In practice
She does not give advice. She does not set goals between sessions.
She is exact about confidentiality and about the limits of her training; if she thinks a different model would serve you better she will say so. She has a small soft chair in her room and a slightly bigger one and a kettle.
Most of the people I see in their twenties are not stuck. They are quietly asking a question that no one around them has time for.
Outside the practice
She edits a small twice-yearly journal on the literature of early adulthood, published out of a Bloomsbury bookshop. She walks Hampstead Heath most weekends with an unfit border terrier called Bertha.
I will not pull you out of where you are. I will sit in it with you until you decide for yourself which direction you would like to walk.