Oliver Ip

Oliver is a US-trained psychotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counsellor (LMHC, New York; 014804). He has worked in both community mental health and private practice providing clients of diverse backgrounds with the care, support, and skills they need. He has helped his clients work through issues such as anxiety, depression, relationship issues, neurodivergence, identity exploration (including culture, gender, sexuality), addictions, shame, and trauma (both acute and chronic/complex).

Oliver provides individual therapy for adolescents and adults (16+) both online and in-person. He believes that therapy can be a place where we can be at rest—experiencing comfort, being met with compassion—and also be (gently) challenged at the same time. This allows change to happen. He aims to create a compassionate, non-judgemental, and sometimes playful space in sessions where you can feel safe enough to bring all the different parts of yourself that make you who you are. Therapy becomes a space where we gain insights, puzzle out the different thoughts, laugh, cry, dream, rage, and hold the many feelings that make us fully human.

Oliver takes a trauma-informed, queer- and trans-affirming integrative approach using different therapeutic tools to meet his clients’ unique individual needs. At its core, Oliver’s approach brings together psychodynamic and narrative therapies to help his clients better know themselves, their emotions, and their needs. He believes we are fundamentally relational creatures and uses relational-cultural therapy to help his clients use their self awareness to develop the kinds of supportive relationships that we need to flourish. He also uses EMDR therapy for the treatment of acute and chronic/complex trauma.

Oliver specialises in supporting clients forming and exploring their identities. He has lived his life back and forth between the UK, HK, and the USA and like others from mixed cultural and geographical backgrounds (e.g. immigrants, TCKs, internationals) has spent much of his own life untangling the myriad—sometimes conflicting—identities that make up who he is. He is passionate about supporting those seeking to unpack the intertwined issues of belonging, transience, family, language, community, spirituality, and colonisation. This also extends to his passion for supporting LGBTQIA+ clients exploring gender and sexuality and how these identities connect with the rest who they are. His aim is to help clients build a sense of home in themselves and the world.

Oliver also specialises in issues around religious and spiritual trauma. His academic theological background and past pastoral work has exposed him to the inner workings of how religion affects us, for better or worse. He also completed a specialisation at Columbia University in the mental health experiences and needs of bi/pan/queer religious folks. Oliver helps clients recover from traumatic religious experiences/spaces including misogyny, spiritual abuse, high-control religion, homophobia, and purity culture. He helps them deconstruct and process harm, grieve what was lost, and find a path forward that gives them meaning while embracing all of who they are.