Recovery, made existential.

Kindly Now is a private psychology practice led by Dr Stephanie Knight, offering therapy, bespoke intensive programmes, clinical case management and consulting for individuals and families.

Adults aged 18 and over experiencing addiction, substance misuse and compulsive behaviours, eating disorders, trauma and burnout, or existential crisis and self-loss. Every enquiry begins with an assessment of suitability.

Kindly Now provides psychological care rather than medical treatment. For therapy and intensive programmes, clients need to be medically stable. Where substance use or an eating disorder is involved, the client’s GP or medical team needs to be involved in their care alongside therapy, and where inpatient care or medically assisted withdrawal is needed first, clients are signposted to it.

Where care is more complex, Kindly Now can oversee the wider picture through clinical case management for individuals and families. This means identifying the right medical and specialist care, including inpatient and withdrawal services, coordinating the professionals involved, and keeping treatment joined up from beginning to end.

For much of the last century, recovery has been defined largely through the Minnesota model and twelve-step traditions, which understand addiction as a disease. These approaches have helped a great many people, and they remain an important part of the picture. Kindly Now does not see them as the only path to a meaningful and sustainable recovery, but twelve-step fellowships can be part of a client’s care plan if they feel meaningful and helpful. Clients are encouraged to approach recovery with an open mind and a willingness to experiment, so they can discover over time what genuinely supports them. Kindly Now understands recovery more broadly, as something that belongs to anyone whose life has been interrupted, whether by addiction, compulsive behaviour, burnout, illness, loss or crisis, and who is making a concerted effort to cultivate new ways of being in the world.

From this perspective, recovery is the process of learning to live in new ways when the old ways have stopped working. It involves both undoing the old and building the new: understanding what a behaviour or way of living has been doing for you, and gradually developing ways of being that feel more honest, more sustainable and more your own. It takes shape in ordinary life, in daily habits and the body, in relationships, in how you see yourself and in what you choose to work towards. No single model or method can define it for everyone.

For many people, abstinence is the foundation of recovery, and a deeply meaningful one. What recovery looks like is nonetheless personal, shaped by each person’s history and needs, and by an honest understanding of what supports the life they want to live. Choice always sits within real circumstances and limits, and recovery asks what is possible for you now, and how you might live more freely and fully within it.

Existential therapy is an approach to psychotherapy rooted in philosophy, drawing on thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and de Beauvoir. Rather than treating a person’s difficulties purely as symptoms to be removed, it seeks to understand them in the context of their whole life, and of the conditions all human beings share: that we are free and responsible for how we live, that we exist in relation to others, that life is uncertain and finite, and that meaning is something we must find and make for ourselves.

It is phenomenological, which means it begins with your experience as you actually live it, rather than fitting you to a theory or a diagnosis. Together, we look closely at how you are living, what you value, the choices open to you and the limits you are working within, and how all of this relates to the difficulties that brought you to therapy. Anxiety, despair and confusion are taken seriously as part of being human, and often as signs that something in a life is asking for attention.

Yes. Kindly Now’s practice is informed by the guidelines of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for mental health, addiction and eating disorders. Existential therapy is the overarching approach, and it draws on approaches recommended by NICE, including cognitive behavioural therapy, behavioural activation and psychodynamic therapy. Where needed, care is coordinated with a client’s GP or other medical professionals, for example for medically assisted withdrawal or physical health monitoring.

Kindly Now is based in London. Sessions are held online, so you can work with Stephanie wherever you are. Sessions can also be arranged in person on request.

Kindly Therapy and Kindly Rehab both begin with an initial assessment, and their fees are set out on each service page. Consulting fees are set out on the Kindly Care page, and case management is quoted individually, according to the needs of each case. Services and products are non-refundable.

Kindly Now does not work directly with insurers at present. Invoices and letters can be provided so that you can claim the cost back from your insurer. Please check with your insurer beforehand that they will accept this for reimbursement.

There is a great deal of free support available from the NHS, specialist charities and peer support groups. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999 or go to A&E. Outside the UK, contact your local emergency services.

In a crisis

• NHS 111: call 111 and choose the mental health option (England)

• Samaritans: 116 123, 24 hours a day

• Shout: text SHOUT to 85258, 24 hours a day

NHS and mental health

• Your GP, for assessment, treatment and referral

• NHS Talking Therapies: free psychological therapy in England, and you can refer yourself at nhs.uk/talking-therapies

• Mind: information and support at mind.org.uk

Drugs and alcohol

• Change Grow Live (CGL): free, confidential local services across England, at changegrowlive.org

• We Are With You: drug, alcohol and mental health support at wearewithyou.org.uk

• FRANK: 0300 123 6600, 24 hours a day, or talktofrank.com

• Amy Winehouse Foundation: support for young people affected by drugs and alcohol, including Amy’s Place, recovery housing for young women in London, at amywinehousefoundation.org

Twelve-step and peer support

• Alcoholics Anonymous: 0800 9177 650

• Narcotics Anonymous: 0300 999 1212

• Gamblers Anonymous: 0330 094 0322

• Cocaine Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous also hold free meetings across the UK

Gambling

• National Gambling Helpline (GamCare): 0808 8020 133, 24 hours a day

Chemsex

• Antidote at London Friend: londonfriend.org.uk

• 56 Dean Street: dean.st

Eating disorders

• Beat: 0808 801 0677, or beateatingdisorders.org.uk

For families and friends

• Al-Anon: 0800 0086 811

• Adfam: adfam.org.uk

• Families Anonymous: famanon.org.uk

Neurodivergence

• ADHD UK: adhduk.co.uk

• National Autistic Society: autism.org.uk