For anyone who has experienced states of mind they didn't choose and couldn't control.
Ashley Pollak
One-to-one guidance for people navigating a complex mind
alongside the ambitions, careers, and lives they're determined to build.
You're functioning. Probably well. But your mind moves between states you didn't choose and can't always predict. Periods of unusual energy and momentum. Periods of flatness or inertia. An anxiety that sits underneath everything else. These states shape how you work, how you lead, and how you see yourself.
You may have a diagnosis. You may not. What matters is that you recognise the pattern, and you're ready to understand it rather than just survive it.
What I bring.
I built a career as a Creative Director for marketing organisations and broadcasters including the BBC, in the UK, Spain and UAE. All of it while navigating bipolar disorder.
That has meant hyper-productivity where ideas arrive faster than I can capture them. Depression where making a phone call feels insurmountable. And everything in between.
Over several years I have explored and learnt from leading thinkers: psychotherapists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and practitioners working in meditation, movement, and building communities.
I've documented my own episodes in real time and studied what actually shifts things. That has become the foundation for the work I now do with people one-to-one.
What we do together.
Our work is about your goals, your ambitions and the life you want to build, making sure your mental health does not set a ceiling on any of them by being forward-looking and active in our ex
One-to-one sessions are grounded in understanding your own patterns of mind well enough to work with them. You are the expert on your own experience. My job is to be fully present, honest and steady, thinking alongside you without diagnosing you or steering you toward a fixed answer.
Some of your strongest qualities live inside the states you have found hardest. There can be depth, honesty and perspective in a low period, and clarity, drive and invention in a high one. Every state you come to understand leaves you more self-aware and more adaptable.
The sessions move forward like good coaching, built around what you are working towards. The way I work comes from person-centred counselling: present, never diagnosing or directing. And my grounding is the experience of having navigated a complex mind myself.
How our work will unfold.
Each session begins with a check-in. You share how your time has been since we last met, and we review it against the work so far. We talk through the here and now first, the surface of your week, before we go deeper through the framework.
The road so far
We start with your story. Where you have been, what you have navigated, and what you already know about your own mind.
Where you are heading
We define what you want to achieve. Your goals, your ambitions, the life you are building. This gives the work its direction and everything that follows serves it.
The states you move through
We map your states by energy and emotional tone. The high, driven periods, the flat ones, the anxiety underneath. You learn to recognise them as they arrive, not just in hindsight
What is holding you back
People who have known difficult states of mind often hold back from a career move, a relationship or a big life step for fear of what it might set off. We examine the beliefs you hold about what your mind allows, test which are real limits and which are assumptions, that can be reframed.
Finding calm
We explore the practices that shift a state, and which ones fit which state, because a high and a low ask for different things. Calm is where clear, deliberate choices become possible
Moving forward
We build your own frame of reference. A way of reading your mind and working with it that you carry into your ambitions, drawing on what each state gives you and no longer held back by the boundaries of a diagnosis.
Rates & packages
£120 per hour
6 sessions - £500
12 sessions - £900
Concessionary rates available
My training.
I am always looking to build on my personal experience through courses and training. I have completed:
BRIEF's Solution Focused Practice Foundation Level 1
MHFA England Adult 2-day course
Tavistock's Motivational Interviewing introductory module
ImROC Level 3 Peer Support
I also believe my years of facilitation and training shape how I do this work. What carries across is the practice of being fully present with people, listening closely, and helping them reach their own conclusions rather than handing them mine. This has included facilitating men's circles and peer groups, mentoring founders and young people, and delivering workshops and one-to-one coaching.
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