I'm Marcus Grant

I did not arrive at this work through a lifelong love of talking about feelings. I spent nine years as a structural engineer, and I was good at it, and for most of that time I was also quietly not alright in a way I had no words for and no intention of finding any. Eventually someone who loved me made an appointment on my behalf. I went in order to prove it wouldn't work. It worked. That annoyed me for about a month, and then it changed the direction of my life. I retrained, and I've spent the twelve years since sitting with men who walk in exactly as convinced as I was.

I work mostly with men because that's where the queue is quietly longest. The anger that's actually grief. The drinking that's actually coping. The success that arrives and feels like nothing. The men in my room are usually the most reliable person everyone else knows, and reliability, it turns out, is heavy.

The straight-up part

The name is a working method, not a slogan. I'll tell you what I see, plainly and kindly, and I'll expect honesty back when you're ready to give it. Direct is not the same as harsh: nobody gets ambushed in here, nobody gets a lecture, and the pace is always yours. But you're not paying me to nod for fifty minutes, and I won't insult you by doing it. When something you're saying doesn't add up, I'll say so. Most men find that's the moment the work actually starts.

Who turns up here

Engineers, chefs, delivery drivers, directors, dads. Men whose partners sent them the link, and men who found it themselves at 2am and sat on it for three months, which is normal, by the way. I'm a Black British man, Bristol born, and a member of BAATN, the Black, African and Asian Therapy Network. Some men choose me because they want a therapist who doesn't need the context of their lives explained line by line. Others never mention it. Both are exactly right.

Sessions run from a ground-floor room just off Welsh Back, out along the harbourside if we're walking, or online from wherever you are.