Dr Ursula Lau

Clinical Psychologist

The teardrop captures the struggle to cope with the pain of our lived experience. It also embodies our capacity to be moved – to feel joy, mastery, beauty and love. As captured in this metaphor, I approach therapy as a transformative process helping you work through your struggle with integrity and compassion.

I’m registered as a Clinical and Research Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of Social South Africa and Board of Healthcare Funders. I received my Bachelor of Arts with Honours (Applied Psychology) and my Master of Arts (Research Psychology) at The University of the Witwatersrand.  I undertook my clinical training as an International Ford Foundation Fellow in the United States, where I obtained a Master of Arts (Clinical Mental Health Counselling) from the The Ohio State University. I obtained my Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Kwazulu-Natal.

My professional experience comes from having worked with diverse populations, locally and internationally, across wide-ranging contexts and circumstances. These have included hospital settings, specialised units for personality disorders and alcohol and substance rehabilitation, community counselling settings, and student supportive counselling and therapy. Collectively, these experiences continue to teach, enliven, inspire and ground my work.

Whatever your struggle, life events may leave you feeling lost, abandoned, overwhelmed or hopeless. Therapy can offer a space to alleviate your pain and to help you bear your struggle with integrity. This struggle is not a flaw, but a necessary human experience. It draws the shadow parts of ourselves to light, inviting us to see ourselves more clearly.

Embracing this experience is a delicate process of self-awareness, surrender, mourning; at the same time, one of healing, discovery, renewal and growth.

Psychotherapy is this journey.

With the help of an attuned therapist, you can allow yourself a compassionate working through of this difficult yet deeply rewarding life-changing process.

My approach

I work from a relational psychodynamic approach but I also draw on other modalities tailored to the therapy: interpersonal process, mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioral and narrative therapies. My approach is relational as we work together to understand your individual personhood – what can help you to be seen, known and understood. It is dynamic as we explore your thoughts and feelings and the interpersonal experience that emerges in therapy. These may be expressions of the symptoms you experience in your day-to-day life.

Practice Number: 0797286
HPCSA Number: PS 0106674