Frequently Asked Questions

I speak both English and Cantonese to a native level, having lived, studied, and worked in Hong Kong, the US, and the UK. I also understand enough Mandarin to get certain concepts and phrases for which there aren’t English equivalents. You can always type Chinese (Traditional or Simplified) when my Mandarin fails me. Beyond that, I work with multilingualism with sensitivity, informed by the work of Dr Beverley Costa. I’ve worked with many non-native English speakers. And to Cantonese readers: 係呀！我喺香港讀書時有讀中國語文及文化科。

I did my coaching training at the University of Hong Kong School of Professional and Continuing Education and earned an Advanced Certificate in Life Coaching with distinction. The training included over 100 contact hours (mostly in-person), covering ICF Core Competencies, personal development, and coaching practice done in both English and Cantonese. In addition, I have an Advanced Certificate in Counselling from the same institution and a Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy from the University of East London. I am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), meaning that I adhere to its Ethical Framework, receive clinical supervision every month, and engage in continued professional development (CPD). I do far more CPD than I'm required to, and I have been and continue to be particularly interested in all things related to complex trauma, narcissism, and neurodiversity (especially autism). For more on my academic and professional background, including what I bring outside of coaching and counselling training, please visit my LinkedIn profile.

Yes, I do. I am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and work in accordance to its Ethical Framework. I have a clinical supervisor who is also a BACP member. And as a member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), I adhere to the EMCC Global Code of Ethics. I also work with an EMCC-accredited supervisor.

🎵 Alexander Hamilton! 🎵 (Sorry, I’m a musical theatre kid.) Maloney is on my passport, but to my friends I’ve always been Mel (or some ‘Konglish’ version of Maloney). For many years I’d kept my professional life almost entirely separate from my personal life, choosing to introduce myself as Maloney in work-related situations and Mel outside of work. Now I just want to integrate both. You can call me by either name. My last name, for the record, is Liu. Feel free to look me up on LinkedIn to make sure I’m a real person. I have recommendations going as far back as 2009.

Aw, thanks! I would really appreciate it if you could: refer a friend; share my content with your network; leave a tip; follow me on LinkedIn; and/or leave me a message. I would love to hear from you!

“Therapy is primarily concerned with alleviating distress and suffering, and coaching is primarily concerned with the development of potential. Coaching can sometimes be therapeutic, but that shouldn’t be its primary purpose.” – David Britten, dual-trained therapist and coach, “How Coaches Can Better Support Clients’ Mental Health”, The AC (Association for Coaching) Podcast “Coaching is . . . an integration of cognitive-behavioural/solutions-focused/positive psychology approaches together with a motivational theory within a humanistic tradition.” – Julia Vaughan Smith, Therapist Into Coach There are many types of therapy. Some are focused on the past, problems, emotions, and/or insight. Some, like cognitive-behavioural therapy and solutions-focused therapy, have more similarities to coaching. I’m passionate about demystifying and destigmatising therapy and helping people find the right support. We can find out through an initial consultation or a one-off coaching session what may be a good next step for you. It’s totally fine with me if you end up working with another helping professional rather than with me; I really do take your mental health seriously. See also this article: “How to figure out if you need a career coach, a life coach or a therapist”.

The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), of which I’m a member, defines coaching and mentoring jointly as follows: “It is a professionally guided process that inspires clients to maximise their personal and professional potential. It is a structured, purposeful and transformational process, helping clients to see and test alternative ways for improvement of competence, decision-making and enhancement of quality of life. Coach and Mentor and client work together in a partnering relationship on strictly confidential terms. In this relationship, clients are experts on the content and decision-making level; the coach and mentor is an expert in professionally guiding the process.” Separately, the EMCC has the following definition of mentoring: “Mentoring is a learning relationship, involving the sharing of skills, knowledge, and expertise between a mentor and mentee through developmental conversations, experience sharing, and role modelling. The relationship may cover a wide variety of contexts and is an inclusive two-way partnership for mutual learning that values differences.” When I say that my coaching services are usually 95% coaching and 5% mentoring, I’m referring to how I’m focused on drawing out your inner resources and being your thinking partner (coaching), and if you’re like most people who’d choose me as a coach, chances are good that I do have the skills, knowledge, and expertise that are relevant to your goals and that my experiences may be of interest to you (mentoring). I will always work with you on that balance, and you’re of course welcome to choose 100% coaching. You can find the EMCC definitions here: EMCC Global Competence Framework, Glossary V2, Revised January 2018.

You’ll need to be in reasonable shape mental health-wise, open to self-reflection, take responsibility for your learning and development, and be willing to commit the time and effort required to make your goal happen. Yes, I’ll support you, but like a personal trainer, I cannot exercise for you if you want to get fit. I am by no means saying that coaching ought to become yet another place where you have to perform, because it’s really not! For the most part, if you bring yourself, you’ll be fine. A practical note: Once we decide to work together (after an initial consultation and before our first session), I’ll ask that you sign a coaching agreement covering basics such as: acknowledgement of what coaching is and is not; confidentiality and its limits; consent for your basic details to go on my coaching log, which may be submitted to a professional body for accreditation purposes; and any minimum commitment, frequency, and fees.

It really depends on what your needs are and where you’re at on your journey. People usually come to me with a specific-enough goal for which there is: some kind of timeline built in (e.g. finding more-fulfilling work within X number of months); some degree of progress that they’re looking for (e.g. becoming 10% more confident to handle conflict, disagreement, and negotiations); some degree of flexibility as to when coaching is considered finished (e.g. developing and fine-tuning a personal toolkit that’s sufficient to meet most challenges you face when running your business); or some tangible outcome (e.g. getting clear on the real issue and untangling the yarn of emotions, so that you’re no longer overwhelmed and are in a better place to make some important decision). Generally, I’d recommend a block of 4 sessions to start, usually at a frequency of one session every other week with an accountability check-in in between sessions. That way you get to take advantage of the power of pre-commitment, and we work together regularly enough to inspect and adapt and keep the momentum going. I also offer single-session/one-at-a-time coaching. This is a way of working where: We meet for one session of coaching. You take time after the session to reflect and digest what you’ve learned, take action, experiment, then decide whether to book another session. More support is always available! We can discuss more during your initial, free consultation.

My answer is going to be a bit spoiler-y (up to S3E6 as of this writing), so continue reading at your own risk. For the most part, I like Ted as a coach, such as: how he really cares about helping his players be better people off the pitch as well; his moments of vulnerability that lead to impactful speeches (i.e. using his own experiences in a helpful way); his willingness to see the good and the potential in people; his treatment of everyone as a fellow human, regardless of their status; his (sometimes correct) judgement call of letting people rise to the occasion rather than intervening himself; his humour, musical references, and use of language; and how he doesn’t blame or shame people as a way of motivation. Where I hope to see him grow: his lack of knowledge in his area of coaching (this was cute in his first season, but after so long?); when his positivity veers into toxic territory; a common issue: trying to help others while ignoring his own problems, even when his struggles clearly leak into and impact his work; related to the above, his inconsistent relationships with the people he influences (sure, those people are grown-ups who we can rightfully expect to state their own needs and concerns, but I also expect that Ted, as a coach/leader, to notice when his people are struggling); and his tendency to avoid confrontation. But yes, as he admitted himself, he’s a ‘work in progmess’. We all are to one degree or another. So let’s help each other along.

Coaching package (online): £649 1 x kick-off, clarity session (1 hour) 3 x personalised coaching session (1 hour) 4 x post-session accountability check-in via email 1 x 15-minute call for when you could use a boost (e.g. before an interview or after a difficult conversation) Single-session coaching (online): £179 1 x personalised coaching session (1 hour) 1 x post-session accountability check-in via email Coaching extras: We can discuss rates for in-person work, longer-term work, any extra support (e.g. CV/résumé review/editing), or different ways of working (e.g. longer or shorter sessions).

I specialise in complex, relational, and generational trauma. You may have had an emotionally inhibited or chaotic upbringing. You may have been in volatile relationships where you walked on eggshells. You may recognise yourself in terms like adult children of emotionally immature parents and childhood emotional neglect. You may be suffering from chronic depression or anxiety, self-doubt, perfectionism, people-pleasing, difficulty identifying and regulating your emotions, intimacy issues, a sense of worth that's dependent on your productivity, etc. Complex trauma is multi-faceted; healing will be too. My approach is pluralistic, a collaborative, integrative perspective deeply rooted in humanistic and person-centred values. We'll discuss what you want from therapy, and together we'll decide how to get there, knowing that we've got many modalities to draw upon and that I'll meet you where you are. Among the main modalities I integrate and/or am informed by are: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an empirically-based contextual cognitive-behavioural therapy that combines acceptance and mindfulness-based strategies to reduce the influence of fear and avoidance of difficult psychological experiences and to help people identify deeply held personal values and use them to guide meaningful behaviour change Bowen Family Systems Theory, a theory of human behaviour that views the family as an emotional unit and uses systems thinking to describe the unit’s complex interactions Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), a structured therapy that focuses on teaching four core skills (mindfulness; acceptance and distress tolerance; emotional regulation; and interpersonal effectiveness) to help a person create a life experienced as worth living Internal Family Systems (IFS), a non-pathologising, evidence-based psychotherapy that conceives of every human being as a system of protective and wounded inner parts led by a core Self Motivational Interviewing, a directive, person-centred counselling style for eliciting behaviour change by helping people explore and resolve ambivalence Psychodynamic Therapy, a type of psychotherapy that stresses the importance of the unconscious and past experience in shaping current behaviour and makes critical use of the therapeutic relationship Relational Life Therapy (RLT), an integrative approach to relationship therapy which incorporates perspectives and skills from systems therapy, feminist therapy, coaching, and current evidence-based modalities, and which helps people first reconnect to themselves and then to their relationships Schema Therapy, an integrative therapeutic approach which is informed by developmental and attachment theories; helps people to change deep-seated patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that are based on early life experiences; and integrates techniques across experiential, cognitive, behavioural, and interpersonal realms Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), a type of humanistic therapy that focuses on people's goals and strengths, and only delves into the past as far as is necessary to understand their concerns Trauma-Informed Stabilisation Treatment (TIST), a mindfulness-based trauma treatment which views severe symptoms as indications of trauma-related fragmentation and alienation from self and which integrates ideas and techniques drawn from different models such as IFS, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and cognitive restructuring Trained in Hong Kong and the UK, in Cantonese (廣東話) and in English, I bring a multicultural, systemic perspective to my work, informed also by my multidisciplinary education, training in coaching and positive psychology, professional experience in the tech and creative industries, and lived experience of complex trauma and recovery. Our work together can address psychological wounds on cognitive, emotional, behavioural and somatic levels, while recognising cultural and structural factors at play as well. I also understand the overlap between trauma and neurodivergence, and I know a lot about cults, high-control groups/relationships, coercive control, and narcissistic abuse. My clients appreciate my sturdiness, playfulness, and psychoeducation with relatable (and sometimes funny!) analogies. Therapy can be more enjoyable than you may think. We're here to reclaim joy and play too.

My main clinic days are: Tuesday afternoon to evening in Bloomsbury/Holborn; Wednesday on Zoom; Friday morning to early afternoon in King's Cross; and Saturday late morning to afternoon in Hackney. It's possible to reschedule the occasional session to a day/time outside of my main clinic days (occasional being the operative word here). I also have flexibility for short-term or single-session/one-at-a-time therapy. I don't offer any 8am and 9am appointments. Sorry, morning people, I'm not your person.

My standard fees range from £85 to £125 per weekly session depending on: your income; where we work (in-person work in Central/East London starts at £90); when we work (sessions that take place outside of 11am–5pm are charged at the higher band); and the amount of flexibility you require, such as if you work shifts and cannot commit to the same time/place every week. Single-session/one-at-a-time therapy is £125 per session (including reviewing your pre-session questionnaire). These fees reflect the myriad third-party and less visible costs associated with running a London-based private practice and not becoming yet another burned-out, well-intentioned but ultimately ineffectual therapist. My fees are set to enable me to: take on an optimal client load (both overall and on a daily basis), so that I can be fully present and prepared for every session and give you the consistently high level of service you deserve; engage in more quality training and supervision than the minimum required, so that I am always learning what I need to work better with you; offer concessions* to those who may not otherwise be able to access therapy; and minimise the level of financial stress that's inherent with unstable therapy practice revenue. I know from personal experience that getting the right and high-quality therapy earlier would've saved me years of suffering, and that with the right help, meaningful change can happen in a shorter amount of time than you may think. I also know as an East Asian, neurodivergent, queer, immigrant woman that there's a segment of the population for whom the barriers to good therapy go way beyond finances. If my website resonates with you but the fees are a concern, please know that I do have some concessionary spots* and that it's also worth considering budgeting for just 12 weekly sessions. A small chunk of meaningful work is valuable too. *As of January 2025, all my concessionary spots are taken, but you're welcome to get on my waitlist. Also, my Friday clinic at the wheelchair-accessible King's Cross location is not full yet, and I can offer a concessionary rate to one wheelchair user.

Please refer to Locations.

Generally, yes, at least to start. Weekly sessions seem to be pretty effective in helping us build a therapeutic alliance and getting things going. And while everyone is different, it's not unusual for people to come to therapy at a time when weekly therapy is closer to the right dose of support they need. Being a therapist is also a bit like reading 10 books at the same time and keeping track of all the different plots and characters. I'm pretty good at that, but I still know my limits. It's more doable if a new book is more like part of a series that I'm already somewhat familiar with. Give me a chance to finish book 1 with less interruption first. 😂