Dr. Daniel Moerken

Hi, I’m Daniel. I’m a counselling psychologist, writer, husband and father of four, based in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand.

I grew up in Norway, though I’m half British, and spent a few years living in California after leaving school. It was there, through my own experience of working with a therapist, that I first became interested in psychotherapy and in trying to understand why people become who they are.

I later moved to London, where I completed a BSc in Counselling & Psychology followed by a Doctorate in Counselling Psychology. Since then, I’ve worked as a psychologist in the UK, Norway and New Zealand, across public mental health services, NGOs and private practice. I’m registered with the New Zealand Psychologists Board and currently work as Clinical Director of Talking Cure NZ. Alongside this role, I continue to work psychotherapeutically with my own clients, both privately and through ACC Sensitive Claims.

My approach to psychotherapy is primarily relational and psychodynamic, drawing particularly on attachment theory, developmental psychology and person-centred therapy. But underneath the different theories is a much simpler idea that has increasingly shaped the way I understand people: people make sense.

Over years of sitting with people in therapy, I’ve become fascinated by behaviours that initially seem irrational, contradictory or self-defeating. Again and again, I’ve found that when we understand enough about someone’s history, relationships, emotional world and the ways they have learned to protect themselves, their behaviour begins to make sense.

That idea has increasingly become the focus of my writing.

I publish essays under my Norwegian name, Dr Daniel Mørken, exploring why we become who we are, why we do what we do, and what changes when we learn to understand ourselves and each other. My current writing project, Everyone Makes Sense, brings together ideas from psychodynamic, attachment, developmental and relational psychology in an accessible way of thinking about ourselves and the people around us.

You can read more about me and the way I work by clicking here.