I work deeply with emotions, creating a safe and attuned space where you can access and stay with your emotional world, develop emotional clarity, and navigate difficult internal states. My first task is always to listen — to understand you, your history, and your lived experience — and from there I integrate the therapeutic approaches that best support your process.

Alongside psychotherapy, I may also draw on mindfulness-based approaches or clinical hypnotherapy where appropriate, or offer them as separate therapeutic options depending on your needs. This may include Person-Centred Therapy, Emotion-Focused Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Existential Therapy, and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).

Over the years, through ongoing practice, study, and close attention to the lived realities of my clients, I have developed my own therapeutic framework — the Innate Entitlement Framework™.

You can learn more about this approach in my in-depth blog on the Innate Entitlement Framework™, available here: https://esperansa-therapy-swansea.co.uk/innate-entitlement-framework-embodied-boundaries-nervous-system-achievement-and-existential-presence/

This framework emerged naturally from my Humanistic foundations. It honours the whole person, centres lived experience, and integrates emotional depth with embodiment, boundaries, and nervous system awareness.

Rather than replacing the Humanistic approach, it extends and strengthens it — offering a clearer and more coherent understanding of how people lose themselves, how they adapt, and how they return to an authentic relationship with themselves and with life.

I integrate mindfulness-based practices throughout my work because they invite clients back into presence — often the first step in restoring regulation and reconnecting with themselves. Within the Innate Entitlement Framework™, mindfulness is not simply a technique for calming the mind; it is a doorway into embodied awareness, where we can feel ourselves more clearly, reduce stress, and meet life from a grounded place.

In line with this framework, I support clients to develop a healthier relationship with their body — the first boundary, the first home, and the foundation of regulation. When we listen to the body and care for its needs, we restore the natural entitlement to exist, to take up space, and to be met.

Ultimately, this integrated way of working supports clients in moving beyond survival patterns and into a deeper sense of self-connection. It helps them not only feel more grounded and less anxious, but also to live in a clearer, steadier, and more meaningful relationship with themselves — and with life itself.

Personally, I believe that many mental health struggles are, at their core, illnesses of disconnection — tears in the relationship we have with ourselves, often shaped by our history and early emotional environments. Again and again in my practice, I meet clients who are surviving life rather than living it. They may arrive with different symptoms, diagnoses, or challenges, yet beneath the surface there is often a shared experience: a sense of being lost within themselves, caught in loops of past and future, unable to rest into the present.

Here, entitlement does not refer to arrogance, demands, or the inflated meaning the word carries in everyday language. Within the Innate Entitlement Framework™, entitlement refers to our existential birth right — the natural, biological right to exist, to take up space, to have needs, and to be met in relationship. When this birthright is disrupted early in life, a quiet fracture can form — a loss of the inner sense that “I am allowed to be here.” This loss is not a flaw, but a moment where the self begins adapting — surviving instead of living — often through people-pleasing, over-responsibility, collapse, or emotional self-erasure. Restoring this original entitlement is not about becoming demanding; it is about returning to the truth we were born with: I exist — and I am allowed to be here.

At the heart of my work is supporting clients to integrate the wounded or fragmented parts of themselves so they can reconnect with their own inner ground. Through self-acceptance, authenticity, and the restoration of entitlement, clients begin to develop resilience and a more stable sense of self. From this place, authentic connection with others — and with life itself — becomes possible again. Presence stops being a struggle and becomes a natural way of inhabiting one’s own existence.

My own journey deeply informs my work. At 23, I moved to London alone from São Paulo, Brazil, without speaking English. I arrived with only £800 and a paid English course for six months, guided by a strong inner calling to step into the unknown and discover my purpose. Twenty days after arriving, the friend who had met me at the airport turned against me, and I made the decision to walk away and stand on my own two feet. Even then, I did not experience myself as alone or disconnected — I carried a deep sense of trust in myself and in life. I saw my journey as a relationship with life itself, and I was determined to build a strong, trusting connection with it.

Before I found my first job, I decided in my heart and mind that I would find one. I carried a small vocabulary book everywhere and practised the sentence: “I am an English student looking for work to pay for school, to eat, and to have a place to sleep,” which I repeated with a smile. With only £20 left, I found my first job in London after 20 days. I mastered the language, attended university, and qualified at master’s level in 2014. That same year, I opened Esperansa Counselling and Psychotherapy Services.

Today, I run my own practice and support clients and students with the same compassion and belief that carried me through my journey. This sense of resilience and connection is at the heart of my work — supporting others to develop self-trust and a grounded relationship with themselves and with life.

I offer sessions face-to-face, online, and by telephone from my consulting room at Cherry Tree House, Carmarthen Rd, Swansea, SA1 1HE.

I understand how daunting it can feel to contact an unknown professional at first, especially if you have never experienced counselling before. I am more than happy to answer any questions you might have by email, telephone, or text.

To support this first step, I offer a free 20-minute introductory session, either online or face-to-face, giving us the opportunity to meet and explore whether we feel comfortable working together. Please feel free to call and make a booking — I look forward to connecting with you.

You’re welcome to read what my clients have shared about their journeys with me on my Testimonials page

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my bio, I will be more than happy to be of services if you need! 

Janaina Vieira Mahe.