Hi, I'm Patrick.
I built a career as a human rights lawyer for the United Nations to inspire profound change in how we live. With a background in psychology and a long-standing interest in the esoteric and intuitive arts, I bring this same passion for public service to my private practice.
I understand what happiness is because I have been physically, emotionally and spiritually broken. I have explored a vast variety of mental, physical and energetic healing techniques, and I bring the full range of my personal experience to my work. I wish you every success.
My career has reached around the globe and spanned the public, private and voluntary sectors. My clients reflect this diversity, and I counsel people from all walks of life to navigate the elegant complexity of our world in practical terms.
I've built my practice on my foundation as an international human rights lawyer. A human rights lawyer has three big challenges to tackle every day. They have to connect universal principles with personal experience. They have to distill complicated situations into clear and compelling narratives. And they have to speak from the heart in a way that inspires tangible change.
Growing up, I never doubted that I’d go into psychology. I am profoundly interested in what makes people tick, and I jumped at the opportunity to design and conduct a community research project at the University of Virginia for my senior thesis. After graduation, I spent a year adulting in San Francisco before I made my way back across the country to study therapeutic jurisprudence at Yale Law School. Bitten by the big city bug, I went on to work for a Wall Street law firm in London and then New York as I closed out my high-flying twenties.
Free from the shackles of student debt, I returned to Europe and became an international human rights lawyer. I started my next chapter as the first attorney at a growing global non-profit and finished a decade later traveling the world as an advocate for responsible business at the United Nations. Impending parenthood brought me back to London, and a course in Co-active Coaching inspired me to channel my experience into interpersonal relationships. My 30-year fascination with esoteric arts like astrology, tarot and palmistry came alive; my extensive knowledge of psychological tools like the Enneagram and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator found roots; and my own healing journey brought me in touch with my intuitive gifts.
I love what I do, and I am open and curious about how it develops. I remain grounded in my belief that every human has the right to a fulfilling life, and my work gives me confidence that we can always find a meaningful way through turbulent times. I will forever be a passionate advocate, and I hope you can already feel that I’m rooting for you.
I want to be clear that my life story only makes perfect sense in hindsight. As I navigated to this moment in spacetime, I often had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. I regularly doubted my choices, my abilities, my interests. I sometimes felt alone and confused, like I’d taken a wrong turn in the middle of the night. I wondered if I had made everything up, if one day I’d wake up with nothing to show from my decades on this planet.
I still deal with these emotions during periods of intense change, and they are with me as I write this. I have come to appreciate them as confirmation that I am expanding, and I have learned to welcome signs from my body, surroundings and soul that it’s time for something to shift. Holding this perspective can take tremendous focus and attention, and every day I strive for greater trust in myself and the universe around me.
My journey to trust began on a ski slope with a broken wrist. I’m not even sure how it happened; I tipped over gently in the snow and two days later I had a metal plate screwed into my hand. I went back to work the next day, and I flew to Brussels the day after to present at a conference. I was so hopped up on painkillers that I have no idea what I said.
I know now that it wasn’t just my wrist breaking, it was my spirit. For years, I had been traveling every week to an office that I had grown to hate. And yet I remained convinced that I needed my job as I prepared for parenthood, that my life couldn’t move forward otherwise. I accepted that it was beyond my control to leave, and I trapped myself in an increasingly toxic environment.
So over the next few months, my body made the decision for me. I developed a severe headache that wouldn’t go away; I woke up choking in the middle of the night; I lost control over my bladder and bowels. I spent the morning of a team retreat crying in the bathroom, and these tears soon flowed all the way to the doctor’s office in London where I was put on two months of medical leave. For the first few weeks, I couldn’t sleep because the anxiety was so intense.
For the next few weeks, all I could do was sleep. I felt like a hot mess, and I stopped trying to hide it. As I let myself open up, I also let in support from the world around me. I found a wonderfully intuitive therapist, a seasoned energy healer, a wizened astrologer, a relentlessly positive yoga instructor, and so many loving friends and family members by my side. I began to remember how much I enjoyed my life, and I felt myself attune to the natural flow of the universe.
When I went back to work, I didn’t feel attached. I would imagine that I put on a lab coat as I entered the office, observing how funny it was that my colleagues seemed so invested in projects that bored them and relationships that upset them. I noticed the same patterns in my own behavior, and I resolved to let them go. So when it became time for me to leave, it was an easy decision because it brought me back to who I am.
I continue to get to know myself, and welcoming children into the world has been an extraordinary motivation. If I want my kids to understand that their greatest purpose is to live on the outside as who they are on the inside, I need to show them what this looks like. I love that my quest will never end, and the yellow brick road has so far brought me to an acupuncturist, an herbalist, a craniosacral therapist, a sound healer, a tarot reader, an ancestral counselor, a psychic, a medium, a numerologist, a magician and a parade of other caring people who have all been so generous with their time and attention.
My practice draws from everything that I’ve learned in my own journey, and I know that my work will continue to broaden and deepen as I do the same. I won’t pretend that I have it all figured out, or that I always graciously accept what shows up at my doorstep. But I feel more alive than ever before, and that makes all the difference.