Janaina Mahe

I am originally from Brazil, and I’ve lived in Wales for the past 22 years. I hold a Master’s Level Diploma in Psychotherapy and Counselling Skills, and I run a private counselling and psychotherapy practice in Swansea, which I have been solely directing since 2014. I work with self-referred clients, EAP (Employee Assistance Programme) clients, NHS referrals, and corporate clients, including Amazon and Beacon Cymru in Swansea, delivering individual and couple counselling, as well as workshops focused on mental health, resilience, and stress management.

I also work as a Mental Health Mentor for university students across the UK with learning disabilities, and I supervise Master’s psychotherapy students from The University of Wales Trinity Saint David, as well as qualified psychotherapists. In addition, I am a qualified Mindfulness Now Teacher and studied Mindfulness at the UK College of Mindfulness Meditation in England, a program approved by the British Psychological Society.

I am a Humanistic practitioner. Humanistic therapy adopts a holistic approach that focuses on agency, human potential, and self-discovery. Its aim is to help you develop a strong and healthy sense of self, explore your feelings, access meaning, and build on your strengths. I draw from a range of therapies within this approach, depending on each client’s needs, to support them in learning how to help themselves.

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 modalities that fit your process. 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 science. Rather than replacing the humanistic approach, it extends and strengthens it — offering a clearer, deeper, and more coherent way of understanding 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 — the first step of reclaiming entitlement and reorganising the nervous system. Within the Innate Entitlement Framework™ (explored in more depth on my Being With Life page), mindfulness is not simply a technique for calming the mind; it is the doorway into embodied awareness, where we can feel ourselves 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 helps clients move beyond survival patterns and into deeper self-connection. It supports them not only to 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 see 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 common experience: a sense of being lost inside 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 birthright — 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 forms: a loss of the inner sense that “I am allowed to be here.” This loss is not a flaw. It is the 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.

The heart of my therapeutic work is to help clients integrate the wounded or fragmented parts of the self so they can reconnect with their own inner ground. Through self-acceptance, self-authenticity, and the restoring of entitlement, clients begin to develop real resilience and a stronger 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 been waiting for me at the airport turned against me, and I chose to walk away — to leave that situation and stand on my own two feet. Even then, I never felt alone or disconnected. I carried an unshakeable belief 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, at 48 years old, I run my own company and support clients and students with the same compassion and faith that carried me through my journey. This profound sense of resilience and connection is at the heart of my practice. I believe in helping clients develop self-belief and learn to have their own back, so they can move through life authentically and freely.

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 ensure suitability, I offer an introductory 20-minute session online or face-to-face free of charge. This gives us a chance to meet without commitment and decide whether we feel we can work 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.

Qualifications

• Certificate in Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy, UK College of Clinical Hypnosis 2025
• Certificate in NLP/Ericksonian Hypnosis, UK College of Clinical Hypnosis 2025
• Qualified practitioner since 2014: Postgraduate Diploma in counselling practice( Humanistic) University of Wales Trinity Saint David-level 7- 2014
• Currently training in the Central England College and Mindfulness Now-Diploma Mindfulness Based Clinical Hypnoses which will be concluded in 2024-25
• Qualified Mindfulness Teacher – UK College of Mindfulness Meditation England- Approved by the British Psychological Society – February 2022
• ACT Acceptance and commitment therapy training – The Association for Psychological Therapy accredited course – 2020
• Trauma work: with Babette Rothschild ( somatic trauma training)- central London 2016-2017.
• Making trauma safer- Babette Rothschild – Central London- 2015
• Group work Facilitation Gestalt course- developing effective facilitative skills- Gestalt Centre- London 2015
• Certificate in counselling skills Level 4
• Neath Port-Talbot College – 2012
• Certificate in counselling skills level 3
• Neath Port-Talbot College – 2011
• Introduction to counselling skills level 1 and 2
• Neath Port-Talbot College – 2010
• Diploma in supervision- Centre for Supervision Training and Development CSTD Bath (affiliated to UKCP AND BCPC) 2021 – present (nearly finishing the paperwork) – practiced supervision hours: completed.
• Supervision hours practiced: +300 hours up to date.

Currently, I am supervising 18 Supervisees per month – 14 trainees -[Master’s students from UWTSD] and 4 qualified psychotherapists.

As a practitioner, I have a full time counselling and psychotherapy private practice, which I have been solely directing since 2014.  I work via online, telephone and face to face sessions, with self-referred clients, EAP clients, NHS referrals and Corporations as  Coastal Housing Swansea in which I am directly affiliated to, delivering individual and couple’s counselling to their employees. Also, I work as mental health mentor for universities’s students with mental health issues and learning disabilities.

Finally, I work within corporations, such as Amazon FC in Swansea, delivering talking therapy in house, in order to support Amazon employee’s mental health and wellbeing.

In addition, I comply with  BACP ethical guidelines, including continually developing my practice by taking part on CPDs courses frequently, face to face and virtually.