Amy Ma

Amy Ma

College Counsellor

Amy is a registered counsellor from Cape Town, South Africa and holds a master’s in clinical psychology from the London Metropolitan University. Amy feels deeply connected with her work in providing support to those who are struggling and describes the therapeutic process she shares with her pupils as a meaningful and humbling experience.

Amy practices a psychodynamic approach in counselling that seeks to explore and resolve unconscious conflicts and attachment dynamics that arise from childhood experiences causing emotional distress, behavioural and interpersonal difficulties. Through counselling, Amy hopes to help her pupils gain insight, self-awareness and a deeper understanding of their emotions, behaviours and relationships, whilst also helping them to cultivate self-compassion and ways to respond to suffering with a sense of kindness, curiosity and non-judgement.

Before becoming a counsellor, Amy obtained a bachelor’s in music education, a bachelor’s in psychology and a PGCE, all through the University of Cape Town and taught music in both secondary and primary schools for over 12 years and is a certified IB PYP music teacher. She is about to embark on a Mindfulness Based Stressed Reduction (MBSR) certification through Jon Kabat-Zinn and the University of Massachusetts. Amy’s dream is to one day train and work as a psychoanalyst as she has dedicated the past 15 years (and counting) as a client herself in psychoanalysis – a profound journey she derives immense value from.

In her free time, Amy is happiest when she is training as an amateur equestrian athlete, spending quality time with loved ones, gardening, appreciating the outdoors, and reading non-fiction, in particular, anything written by the great existential psychotherapist, Irvin D Yalom.