About
A psychologist of loss, and of the return to self
Dr Chloe Paidoussis-Mitchell is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist working in the existential tradition. For 25 years she has specialised in grief, trauma and the losses that go unrecognised.
Background
Twenty-five years at the threshold
Chloe was born in Athens and has lived and practised in the United Kingdom for more than three decades. She now divides her time between London and Athens, and sees clients online around the world.
Her clinical work began with people facing bereavement, illness, trauma, divorce, redundancy and relationship rupture. Over time she noticed that clients were asking questions that went beyond symptom relief. Who am I now? Why don’t I recognise myself? How do I live in a life I didn’t choose? Those questions became the centre of her practice.
She founded The Grief Clinic to offer specialist psychological care for grief in all its forms, including the losses that come without a funeral: of identity, health, belonging, certainty and an imagined future.
Alongside her clinical work, Chloe teaches existential therapy at postgraduate level, supervises doctoral research, writes, and speaks to organisations about what their people are carrying.
Approach
Healing is not only about reducing symptoms
It is about restoring a coherent relationship with yourself after life has fragmented it.
Fragmentation
When a major loss arrives, the inner map we live by no longer matches the world. What follows is not personal failure. It is a human response to profound change.
Presence
Therapy begins by turning towards what is actually happening, in the body, in relationships and in meaning, with steadiness and compassion rather than judgement.
Becoming
The aim is not a return to who you were. It is learning to belong to who you are becoming, and to live more fully in the life you now have.
Chloe’s practice integrates existential philosophy and therapy, attachment theory, trauma science, compassion-focused psychology and the neuroscience of grief. It works alongside diagnosis, medication and other evidence-based treatment where they are needed.
Credentials
Qualifications & appointments
- Qualifications
- Doctorate in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy (DCPsych)
- Registration
- Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) and Associate Fellow (AFBPsS) of the British Psychological Society
- Teaching
- Lecturer in Existential Therapy, NSPC / Middlesex University, and the Existential Academy, London; doctoral supervisor
- Executive education
- Guest lecture series in Mental Fitness and Resilience, Cambridge University Executive MBA
- Publications
- The Loss Prescription (HarperCollins, 2024); contributor to Psychological Growth After Trauma: Insights from Phenomenological Research, ed. Simon Wharne (Routledge); academic work on traumatic grief, bereavement and existential trauma therapy
- Media
- BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, CNN International, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, HuffPost
- International
- Workshop series for the Australian Society for Existential Practice
The question behind the work
What do human beings need when life is no longer the life they expected?