Meet Dr Kat
Dr Katharina Lederle
Sleep specialist and counsellor
I’ve long been curious about how we come to experience ourselves, other people and the world around us.
I work with adults experiencing sleep difficulties, including insomnia, and have a particular interest in women’s sleep and perimenopause. In my counselling work, I meet adults who are finding something difficult in their lives or who want to understand themselves and their relationships better.
Sleep and counselling are distinct areas of my practice. In both, I want to understand the person I’m working with and what matters to them.
They don’t always remain separate in people’s lives. Sleep may be part of what we work with in counselling, just as thoughts, feelings, relationships and circumstances can be relevant when we work with sleep.
How I think about people
I don’t believe there is one particular way a person should be.
Our biology, our history, our relationships and our circumstances all matter and can influence one another. How each person experiences these things matters too.
So I try to approach each person with openness, recognising that I cannot know in advance what their experience means to them.
My background
My professional life began with biology and a curiosity about how living beings work and behave.
I studied biosciences, completing an MSc in Biosciences with a focus on zoology and animal behaviour, before completing a PhD in Human Circadian Physiology and Behaviour and moving into sleep and circadian science.
My work has since taken me across research, individual sleep work and work with organisations, including shift work and fatigue-risk management in safety-critical industries such as aviation and mining.
Over time, I became increasingly interested not only in sleep itself, but in the person who was trying to sleep.
This growing interest eventually led me to train in psychotherapy and counselling at Regent’s University London.
I am a Registered Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP). I am also the author of Sleep Sense, now in its second edition, and have spoken about sleep and circadian science through organisations, conferences and the media.