Meet Esmée Rotmans

Experience, warmth and a wider perspective

I am a UKCP-registered integrative and transpersonal psychotherapist with over 25 years’ experience, and I hold an MA in Transpersonal Counselling and Psychotherapy. I also work as a supervisor, trainer, lecturer and Reiki practitioner.

My background brings together psychodynamic, person-centred, Gestalt, transactional analysis, existential and transpersonal approaches. These perspectives help me respond to the person in front of me, rather than expecting everyone to fit one way of working.

What it's like to work with me

I don't believe healing is necessarily about becoming someone new. It's more about slowly integrating the parts of ourselves that got buried under adaptation and hurt, and learning to live more authentically.

You'll be invited to slow down, become curious, and explore your inner world honestly at a pace that feels safe. I bring warmth and presence, and where it's useful, gentle, thoughtful challenge.

I won't ask you to be anything other than who you are.

Everyone is welcome

Whether you come to me for therapy, supervision, training or Reiki, I welcome people of every background, culture and ethnicity, of any faith or none, and of all sexualities, genders and relationship styles, abilities and neurotypes. You are welcome here as you are.

What do integrative and transpersonal mean?

Integrative

I draw on different psychological approaches to understand your experience. We can consider your history, relationships and present difficulties from more than one perspective.

Transpersonal

There is room for questions of meaning, spiritual experience and connection, alongside your emotional and relational life. You do not need to follow a particular belief or tradition.

Why The Essential Self?

The name reflects an interest in who we are beneath the expectations, habits and self-judgements we have gathered along the way. It is about developing a closer relationship with ourselves, rather than another ideal to live up to.

For me, psychological and spiritual development belong together. A meaningful spiritual life can coexist with old grief, relationship difficulties or a harsh inner critic. These experiences deserve attention, even when we feel we ought to have moved beyond them.

The lotus has been part of this from the beginning. It flowers on the surface of the water, open and fragrant, while its roots are down in the mud of the pond. Not in spite of the mud: the mud is what feeds it.

I find that worth holding on to. It suggests we do not have to wait for our circumstances to become kinder before anything can grow in us.

That is also what the name points to. The essential self is not something to build or achieve. It is what is already there underneath, your own nature, which you might call soul, or spirit, or simply the part of you that was never in question.

The lotus does not become beautiful. It opens.

One body of work, different ways to meet

Therapy, therapeutic coaching, supervision, mentoring and training are different expressions of this underlying work. Each has its own purpose and boundaries, with self-understanding, compassion and integration running through them. Reiki sits a little apart: a quieter space to rest rather than to work.

Everything I offer is available online and in person at Cherry Tree Therapy Centre in Buckhurst Hill. Reiki can also be offered at a distance. We can discuss which way of working may suit you.