About Michael Conti
If you’ve landed here, you’re probably trying to work out whether I’m the right person for you. This page is the long answer: how I got here, what I’ve trained in, and how I actually work.
I’m an integrative therapist, an EMDR therapist and a clinical supervisor, with a foundation in somatic work. I’ve been working in mental health for over fifteen years: in emergency services, in education, in postgraduate clinical training, and in my own practice.
Most of the people I sit with come to me around three things: trauma, sexuality and gender, and the preparation and integration of expanded states of consciousness. A good deal of my work is with people who arrive with something more everyday than any of that.
I also teach. I’ve tutored and lectured on Master’s programmes in London and Malta, and I supervise other therapists and practitioners. I run courses and workshops as well: for people already working in the field, for anyone wanting to do this kind of work on their own life, and for organisations bringing me in to work with a team on mental health, working relationships, or LGBTQIA+ issues.
If you’re trying to work out whether I’m the right person for you, the rest of this page should help.
How I work
I’m integrative, which in practice means I don’t run one method over every situation. I’ve trained in several and I use what fits the person in front of me.
What runs through all of it is the body. I pay close attention to what’s happening physically – breath, tension, posture, the things you notice a second before you find words for them – while also working with thinking and feeling. Insight on its own tends not to shift much. Something has to change in how you’re actually holding yourself.
I’m trauma-informed, which means that we go at the pace your nervous system can take, rather than the pace the story wants to move at.
Where the spiritual is part of your life, it’s welcome in the room. Where it isn’t, I won’t bring it in.
I’m queer myself
I identify as a queer gay man, and I work with all kinds of people. For clients who are also LGBTQIA+, it does change something in the room.
It means you don’t spend the first several sessions explaining. You don’t have to decide how much context to give before you can say the actual thing. And when something lands – the particular tiredness of being the only queer person in a workplace, the strange grief of coming out later in life, the way family and religion can sit in your body decades after you’ve intellectually resolved them – it lands without translation.
It also means I’ve done my own work on the same ground, and I’m not startled by any of it.
I work with gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and non-binary, gender diverse and asexual people, and with people who are still working out what any of those words have to do with them.
That extends to people whose relationships or sexual lives don’t follow the standard arrangement: open relationships, polyamory, configurations that don’t have a tidy name, and people whose desire runs to kink or BDSM. What usually brings someone here isn’t the practice itself. It’s the jealousy, the endless negotiating, the tiredness of managing other people’s assumptions, or a quiet worry that wanting what you want says something bad about you. I don’t treat any of it as a symptom to be resolved.
A Taoist thread
My own perspective of life has progressively been shaped by Eastern traditions, particularly Taoism where the main idea is that a lot of what we struggle with comes from pushing against the shape of things rather than working with it.
That gives me a starting point of acceptance: seeing clearly what is actually here, including the parts you’d rather weren’t. And then, from there, taking the action that’s genuinely available to you. Not the action you wish were available. Acceptance without action becomes resignation, and action without acceptance tends to be exhausting and off-target. I’m interested in the place where the two meet.
An expat several times over
I’m originally from Malta. I’ve lived in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany and I’m currently in Barcelona.
I mention this because it comes up constantly in the work. Leaving somewhere, arriving somewhere, being fluent in a language and still not quite understood. The slow business of learning how a place actually works – what’s rude here, what’s normal, how people make plans, what a shop assistant’s tone really means – and how much that takes out of you before it becomes automatic. Being surrounded by the unfamiliar for long enough that you stop noticing you’re in a state of constant tension.
And friendship. Building it from nothing, again, at an age when everyone around you already has theirs and isn’t looking. Old friendships carrying on at a distance, quietly reshaping themselves, at times without you in them.
Building a life somewhere you didn’t grow up asks a lot of a person, and it’s rarely the thing that gets named as the problem.
What I work with
Much of my work is what most people come to therapy for: anxiety, low mood, feeling stuck, something that happened and hasn’t settled, or a sense that things aren’t working without being able to say why. You don’t need a specialist reason to come.
Alongside that, there are three areas I’ve trained in specifically.
- Trauma and EMDR: single incidents, long-running relational trauma, and the residue that stays in the body after the danger has passed.
- Sexuality, gender and relationships: LGBTQIA+ identity, shame and desire; coming out, at any age; gender questioning and transition; kink and BDSM; open and polyamorous relationships.
- Psychedelic preparation and integration: the work before and, more importantly, the work after.
I also offer clinical supervision to therapists and practitioners, and I teach and run training for practitioners, individuals, and organisations.
A short introduction
A couple of minutes about me and how I work.
Qualifications and training
Degrees and diplomas
- MSc, Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy
- MA, Professional Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy Supervision
- B.Ed. (Hons.), Education
- Diploma in Philosophy
- Certificate in Psychology
- ICF Diploma in Integrative Coaching
Clinical and specialist training
- EMDR
- Somatic Sexuality Practitioner training
- Sexual Minority Therapy
- Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy
- EMBARK Psychedelic Facilitation Open Access
Further study
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
- Introduction to Queer Studies
- Leadership and Management training
Professional experience
Alongside my own practice, I have worked in various organisations: emergency services, education, and the training and supervision of other therapists. Trauma has run through a lot of it.
- Private practice, working online and in-person
- Senior Counsellor and Deputy Head of Service, Counselling & Trauma Service, London Fire Brigade
- Training Supervisor and Tutor, MA in Advanced Clinical Practice for Psychotherapists, London
- Lecturer on Master’s programmes, Malta
- Freelance workshop and training developer – sexuality, trauma and psychological wellbeing
- Freelance trauma-focused consultancy
- Counsellor, Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST)
The Fire Brigade years, which followed the Grenfell Tower fire, shaped how I think about trauma more than any single training did.
I also peer review for the Journal of Homosexuality.
Languages
I work primarily in English and Maltese.
I can also work in Italian or Spanish, provided you’re comfortable enough in English that we can fall back on it when precision matters. Therapy asks a lot of language, and I’d rather be honest about where mine runs out than have us both quietly guessing.
Other work
Alongside my practice, I co-run Conscious Growth with Joan Sirera, where we offer legal psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands.
This is separate from my therapy and supervision practice. The preparation and integration work I do here is exactly that: preparation and integration.
Let’s have a conversation
The simplest way to find out whether we’d work well together is to talk for fifteen minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s your professional background?
Over fifteen years in mental health. I was Senior Counsellor and Deputy Head of Service at the London Fire Brigade’s Counselling & Trauma Service in the period after the Grenfell Tower fire, a supervisor and tutor on an MA in Advanced Clinical Practice in London, and a lecturer on Master’s programmes in Malta. I now work in private practice online.
What qualifications do you have?
An MSc in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy, an MA in Professional Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy Supervision from Middlesex University, the European Certificate for Psychotherapy, EMDR training, and further training in somatic sexuality and ketamine-assisted work.
Are you a gay therapist?
Yes. I identify as a queer gay man, and I work with LGBTQIA+ people. For a lot of clients it matters that they’re not explaining the basics before they can get to the actual thing.
What languages do you work in?
English and Maltese primarily. I can also work in Italian and Spanish, as long as you’re comfortable enough in English for us to switch back when we need to be precise.
What if I’m attracted to a client?
Bring it. Attraction to clients is common, rarely discussed, and much safer explored in supervision than carried alone. It’s not evidence that you’ve done something wrong, and it often carries useful information about the therapeutic relationship. You won’t be judged for raising it here.
What does “integrative” actually mean?
That I’ve trained in several approaches and use what fits the person in front of me, rather than running one model over every situation. In practice that means EMDR and somatic work alongside cognitive, psychodynamic, humanistic and relational thinking.
Do you supervise as well as see clients?
Yes, and it’s a growing part of my practice. I hold a supervision qualification specifically – from Middlesex University – rather than supervising on the strength of clinical experience alone.