Steady support through the in-between.
Ivybridge Counselling is my independent practice for adults moving through significant life transitions — separation, bereavement adjustment, the shift when children leave home, relocation, and the quieter identity changes that come with any turning point. Sessions are online. Engagements are structured, finite, and paid in full at booking.
The in-between is a real place. It deserves real support.
Relationship change
Separation, divorce, the slow unravelling of a long partnership, or the complicated period that follows. Engagements here make space to process the change at a pace that isn't dictated by paperwork or other people's timelines.
Adjustment after loss
The long adjustment that follows bereavement — not the acute early grief that needs its own kind of support, but the months and years afterward, when the world has moved on and the adjustment is still quietly underway.
Identity and life-stage shifts
Children leaving home, retirement approaching, relocation, a career ending, or simply reaching a turning point and realising the old sense of self no longer quite fits. Reflective work to think clearly about who you are becoming.
Built for the middle ground.
Counselling for life transitions tends to fall through a gap. NHS provision is stretched and waitlists are long. Higher-cost private practice often prices out the very people moving through the financially uncertain periods that transitions so often bring.
Ivybridge Counselling exists in the practical middle. Engagements are clearly scoped. Fees are fixed at booking. Every engagement has a defined beginning and end — no rolling commitments, no escalating session counts, no automatic renewals.
The work itself focuses on transitions specifically, because the in-between deserves a kind of support that is unhurried, structured, and built around the understanding that adjustment takes the time it takes.
Five structured engagements.
Each engagement is scoped to a defined number of sessions and a fixed fee, paid in full at booking. Most new clients begin with a discovery conversation.
Discovery Conversation
A single 60-minute conversation to consider, without pressure, whether this practice is the right fit. Followed by a written note within one working day.
Transitional Counselling Engagement
The practice's most-booked engagement. Eight sessions held over eight to ten weeks, giving enough time for a transition to be examined patiently — without the pressure of a short ticking clock or the open-endedness that can sometimes blur the work. Each session begins where the previous one left off, held within a clear thread agreed at the outset and revisited together as the engagement unfolds. Suitable for clients moving through separation, identity adjustment after a major life shift, or the slower months that follow a significant loss.
Six-Month Counselling Engagement
Twenty-four sessions held across six months — the longest engagement this practice offers. Designed for clients moving through compounded transitions, where more than one significant change is unfolding at the same time, or where the work calls for the kind of unhurried pacing only a longer engagement allows. Includes a mid-engagement review and a final written summary.
Conversation-led, gently structured.
Sessions are 60 minutes, delivered over a secure video platform. Each engagement begins with a written intake covering your background, the transition you are moving through, and what you hope the work might help with. I read the intake before our first session.
Sessions themselves are conversation-led rather than worksheet-driven, but held within a clear thread agreed at the start of the engagement. Between sessions there is no formal homework, though I sometimes offer a reflection or small consideration where it feels genuinely useful.
At the close of each engagement I produce a written session summary — a record of what was covered, what surfaced, and any patterns worth carrying forward. It is yours to keep.
What past clients have said.
I came to Ivybridge eight months after my marriage ended, when everyone around me seemed to think I should have 'moved on' by then. Ifra never once made me feel I was behind schedule. The engagement gave me a place to actually process it at my own pace. I finished feeling steadier than I had in over a year.
After my youngest left for university the house felt unrecognisably quiet, and I felt strangely lost in a way I was almost embarrassed by. The work here helped me understand the shift instead of just enduring it. The written summary at the end is something I still return to.
The six-month engagement gave me the room to work through a relocation and a career change that arrived at the same time. Slow, considered, never rushed. Recovery from a major life shift doesn't look like a transformation — it looks like gradually feeling at home again. That has been my experience here.
Ifra Khan.
I am Ifra Khan, the sole counsellor at Ivybridge Counselling. I trained through accredited counselling pathways and have continued to practise, take regular supervision, and develop the life-transitions work that now defines this practice.
Ivybridge is deliberately small. I take a maximum of eight active clients at any one time — a quality-of-care decision rather than a business one, so that each engagement keeps the unhurried attention the model promises.
The practice operates from East London, with sessions delivered online to clients across the UK.
Before booking — an important note.
This practice does not provide crisis support, clinical psychiatric care, or prescription-based mental health services.
If you are in immediate crisis, experiencing thoughts of self-harm, or feel unable to keep yourself safe, please contact the Samaritans on 116 123, NHS 111, or your GP at any hour. If you are in immediate danger, contact emergency services. These are not services this practice can replace, and reaching them is the right step.
If your situation involves longer-term mental health needs that sit outside the scope of structured transitional counselling — for example a clinical diagnosis requiring specialist treatment, a need for medication management, or acute grief requiring bereavement-specialist support — please speak with your GP about appropriate qualified referrals.
Ivybridge Counselling is a structured counselling practice for adults moving through life transitions. If that matches where you are, you are warmly welcome to start a conversation.
There's no rush. And there's no wrong time to begin.
Discovery conversations are 60 minutes, online, and the recommended starting point for new clients. The conversation is a chance for both of us to consider, without pressure, whether this practice is the right fit before any longer engagement is agreed.
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