Dr. Aurélie Comes

PsyD Psychology from California Southern University, US

PgDip Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) from Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

Level III EMDR from EMDR Academy, UK

MSc Children and Adolescent Mental Health from University College London, UK

BSc (Hons) Psychology from University of Edinburgh, UK

Aurélie is an experienced Cognitive Behavioral Therapist (CBT) who trained and worked in the UK’s National Health Service. In addition to her CBT specialty, she also qualified as an Eye-Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) Practitioner.

Aurélie has extensive experience in private and public health inpatient and outpatient settings and worked in specialist world-renown clinics in the UK with clients experiencing mild to severe difficulties (e.g. depression, anger management, substance misuse, sleep problems, life adjustments, individual relationship difficulties). Her areas of special interest include trauma and eating disorders. She has experience as team lead in NHS to develop high-quality care and contributed to education and supervision of therapists, completed by additional training in evidence-based practices.

Aurélie also provides therapy with adolescents to help with adjusting to a third-culture kid lifestyle, school issues, bullying and transitioning to university.

She is also highly experienced in working with:

• General Anxiety including work stress
• Panic
• Social anxiety
• Health anxiety
• Phobias
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Low Self-Esteem
• Body dysmorphia
• Perfectionism

Having grown up in Hong Kong, Aurélie recognizes the potential benefits these treatments would have on improving the busy lifestyle of local professionals and students and has decided to bring her expertise in these fields back to her home city. In addition to CBT, she also draws upon evidence-based treatment solutions such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) and Mindfulness-based interventions to promote wellbeing and healing by encouraging people to be compassionate towards themselves to increase self-acceptance. Being trained in multiple models of psychological therapies helps her work creatively with clients to tailor their interventions.

Aurélie also had the opportunity to live abroad, exposing her to different cultural settings. This diverse cultural experience gave her the opportunity to incorporate cultural sensitivity into her practice and take a person-centered approach to evaluate the specific needs of her clients. By identifying the optimum way to approach her client’s treatment, she is also able to adapt their process of acceptance, healing and growth. She aims to provide a safe and compassionate reflective space for her clients to explore their thoughts, feelings and behaviors, providing the clients the opportunity of gaining a new perspective and create lasting changes. She emphasizes on working collaboratively with clients to become empowered, develop coping strategies, boost self-assurance and improve mental wellbeing.  She is passionate in supporting clients overcome personal challenges. Through this process, clients are able to gain confidence in mastering these techniques to better cope with whatever challenges arising in the future.

In additional to individual therapy, Aurélie can offer psychoeducational groups on symptoms of anxiety and depression to introduce key coping strategies in work places.

Aurélie has received specialized training in providing supervision to trainee CBT therapists. She has previously managed a team of therapists in the NHS and provided regular clinical supervision.

Aurélie is an accredited member of the British Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP),  the British Psychological Society (BPS) and registered member of the Hong Kong Psychological Society.

Aurélie provides therapy in both English and French.