Some young people don't respond to standard mentoring. They shut down, withdraw, overthink, and feel everything, moving through the world with a depth nobody around them can name. They tend to lose themselves trying to fit a system that doesn't understand them.
This is not standard youth mentoring, and it is not therapy. It is Identity Systems mentoring: specialist work for young people whose inner world is complex, fast, or unusually layered, and whom no one has yet been able to translate.
What changes
Over fourteen weeks, the young people I work with develop a clearer language for who they are and how their own mind works. They learn to read their own patterns rather than get lost in someone else's. They stop performing the version of themselves the world expects, and start moving through it with their actual self intact.
That is the outcome. The rest of this page describes how I get there.
My approach
I treat identity, behaviour, nervous system, culture, and environment as one system, because in a young person they are. The work draws on neuroscience, identity formation, behavioural patterns, cross-cultural experience, rhythm, movement, voice, and belonging. It is neuroscience-informed but non-clinical, structured but responsive, and built around the young person in front of me rather than a curriculum.
Sessions cover identity, perception, emotional regulation, behavioural patterns, belonging, and direction. Every programme adapts to the child.
Who this is for
Young people who are perceptive, sensitive, or easily overwhelmed. Mixed heritage or navigating multiple cultures. Bright but disconnected, withdrawn, or masking. Carrying unspoken identity weight, or neurodiverging in ways that don't fit standard categories. Children whose inner world is complex, fast, or unusually layered.
If a parent has read the above and recognised their child in it, they are likely in the right place.
Why me
I hold a PhD and an HEA fellowship in higher education teaching. I have spent two decades working across human rights, development, anti-racism, and education in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, sitting with people whose identities, like those of the young people I now mentor, don't fit the categories built for them. I have lived inside multiple cultures (Kalabari Ijaw, Fante, Scottish), and I bring unusual sensory perception of my own to the work, which is part of why I can read what young people are signalling before they can name it.
This is not a sideline or a second career. It is the field my research, my practice, and my life have always pointed at.
How it works
One-to-one, in the family home, in 60-minute sessions, once a week for fourteen weeks. A 28-week option is available where it serves the young person better. Parents receive a short debrief after each session where it is useful. Small groups can be arranged at a reduced rate.
Before any commitment, I offer a free 30-minute call with parents, to understand the young person and decide together whether this is the right work for them.
Fees
£2,400 for the 14-week programme, one-to-one, in person. Payable in two instalments. Reduced rates for small groups. Longer-term mentoring available on request.
A small number of places each year are held at a reduced rate for families for whom the full fee would be a barrier, by referral.
Get in touch
To arrange the initial call, email tellme@theTawia.com.