Celebrity therapist and counsellor
I am Shagoon Maurya, a registered counsellor and psychotherapist (ACA Level 2, PACFA). I work with public figures, executives, founders and athletes online worldwide and in person in Melbourne. Two things define how this practice runs: strict confidentiality and delivery that bends around your diary rather than the other way round.
The problem with being known is not that life gets harder. It is that the ordinary places people take their problems stop being available to you.
You cannot sit in a waiting room. You cannot tell a friend, because friends now have contacts. You cannot be entirely candid with your manager, your agent or your family, because all three have a stake in the answer. And the one place designed for exactly this, a therapist's office, is the place where being recognised on the way in would itself become the story. That is a logistics problem sitting on top of an ordinary need for somewhere to talk, and it is solvable.
I work with public figures, senior executives, founders, athletes and people whose names carry weight in smaller worlds than the ones the tabloids cover. The practice is built around two things that clients in this position ask for before anything else: strict confidentiality and flexible delivery.
Confidentiality, in specifics
Every therapist says confidential. That word is doing very little work on its own, so here is what it means in practice. If you want the shorter test to apply to anyone you are considering, the useful questions are here.
No client is ever named, in any context. Not in marketing, not in interviews, not anonymised into a case study, not in a conference talk with the details changed. I write and comment in the media regularly, and nothing a client has said has ever appeared in any of it. That is not a policy I would relax for a good story.
No testimonials, no logos, no roster. A practice that advertises which public figures it treats has already told you how it handles discretion. I do not ask for testimonials from anyone in this position and would decline one if offered.
There is no waiting room. Sessions are online by default, which removes the single biggest exposure risk in the entire process: the building. Nobody sees you arrive, nobody sees you leave, and there is no reception desk holding a diary with your name in it.
Scheduling goes through me directly. No practice manager, no receptionist, no shared calendar with your name on it. If you would prefer to be in the diary under something other than your name, that is a normal request and I will simply do it.
Notes are minimal and held securely. I keep the clinical minimum, and you are entitled to ask what is recorded about you.
I will sign an NDA. Many clients in this position ask, and it is a reasonable thing to ask for. It does not change how I work, because the standard I already hold is higher, but if a signed document is what makes the first session possible, I will sign one.
And the honest part. Confidentiality has limits, and any therapist who tells you it is absolute is either careless or selling something. Broadly it can be broken where there is a serious and immediate risk to your life or someone else's, or where a court compels disclosure. Those exceptions are narrow, they are the same for everyone, and I would rather you knew the exact shape of them before you tell me anything than discover them later. Everything outside them stays in the room, permanently.
Flexible delivery, because your diary is not normal
The most common reason people in this position stop therapy is not that it was not working. It is that a weekly 4pm on a Tuesday survived contact with a tour, a shoot, a season or a funding round for about three weeks.
So the delivery bends rather than the commitment. This is the single most practical difference between a practice set up for public figures and a good local counselling practice that happens to take you on.
Any time zone. I work online worldwide from Melbourne, which means I am already operating across time zones as standard rather than as a favour. Early mornings and late evenings are genuinely available, not theoretically available.
Sessions that move. Filming overruns. Flights get changed. If a session has to move at short notice, it moves, and I do not run a punitive cancellation policy designed for a different kind of client.
Intensity that varies with the year. Some people need weekly through a difficult stretch and monthly through a busy one. Some want a block of sessions compressed into a fortnight while they are in one place, then a gap. A rigid weekly slot is a format, not a treatment requirement, and where a structured method needs a certain rhythm I will tell you so rather than quietly let it drift.
In person in Melbourne, discreetly, if you want it. Some people need to be in a room. That is available and it is arranged so that it is unremarkable.
Continuity while you travel. The point of working online is that the therapy does not restart every time your location does. The same person, the same thread, from a hotel room, a trailer or home.
What people in this position actually bring
Rarely the thing the public would guess, and rarely anything that would make a headline. The recurring themes are these.
Not knowing who is genuine. When your presence changes what people want from a room, working out who likes you rather than the access is exhausting, and it corrodes relationships that are actually fine.
The fear of being found out. Success does not resolve imposter feelings, and it very often intensifies them, because the gap between the public version and the private one gets wider with every good year.
The crash after the project ends. Intense purpose, a large team, total structure, then nothing. It looks like depression and often is, and it arrives on a schedule people learn to dread.
Being the family's infrastructure. When you are the one everyone depends on financially, ordinary family conflict acquires a different weight, and saying no becomes something you are not able to do.
Criticism at volume. Being appraised publicly by people who do not know you is a genuinely unusual psychological load, and the advice to ignore it is worth nothing.
Sustained pressure with no off switch. Burnout in this population is frequently missed, because the output stays high right up until it does not.
Alongside all of that, the completely ordinary things: anxiety, sleep, grief, a marriage in trouble, a parent who is ill. Being well known does not exempt anyone from an ordinary life, it just removes most of the private places to have one.
If you searched for a celebrity psychologist
Most people use therapist, counsellor, psychotherapist and psychologist interchangeably, and there is no reason you should have to know the difference before booking.
If what you want is weekly sessions with someone who does therapy all day, that is the work I do. If you need a formal diagnostic assessment or medication, you need a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and I will tell you that plainly and help you find one rather than keep you in the room. There is more on the distinctions in this guide to the titles.
Why people choose me for this
My commentary has been published across HuffPost, Psych Central, Parade, mindbodygreen, Bustle, TLC, Fatherly, TheLadders, InsideHook, AskMen, SHE DEFINED and The Body, which is the extent to which my name is attached to anything publicly. Clients' names are not, and never will be.
That combination is the point. You want someone whose professional standing you can verify in thirty seconds, and who has demonstrably never traded on a single client to build it. My registrations with the Australian Counselling Association and PACFA are checkable on their own registers, and I would encourage you to check them.
The work itself is the same work I do with everyone: CBT where the thinking patterns are the problem, trauma-focused work where something older is setting the terms, couples work where the relationship is the issue. The fame is context, not the treatment. What changes is the discretion around it and the shape of the diary.
How it starts
A free 15-minute conversation, online, at a time that suits. You do not have to disclose anything in it. It is there so you can ask about confidentiality, ask what happens if you need to move sessions constantly, ask about NDAs, and decide whether I am someone you can talk to. If saying any of it out loud is the part you are dreading, that is worth bringing too, and it is more common than you would think.
Shagoon's expertise has been featured in
Confidentiality, scheduling and how this works
Yes. I work with public figures, senior executives, founders, athletes and people who are well known within smaller professional worlds. I do not name clients, publish testimonials from them or reference them in any form, which is precisely why people in this position are willing to work with me.
I'm a registered counsellor and psychotherapist, ACA Level 2 and PACFA, and I completed postgraduate study in Counselling & Psychotherapy at the University of Adelaide. My work is the ongoing therapeutic conversation. Where a diagnostic assessment or medication is what's actually needed, I'll say that directly and help you find someone who can provide it.
No client is ever named in any context, including anonymised case studies. There is no waiting room, because sessions are online by default, so nobody sees you arrive or leave. Scheduling comes directly to me rather than through a receptionist or shared diary, and you can be listed under a different name if you prefer. Notes are kept to the clinical minimum and held securely.
Yes. Many clients in this position ask and it is a reasonable request. It does not change how I work, since the standard I already hold is higher than most agreements require, but if a signed document is what makes the first session possible then I will sign one.
Yes, and any therapist claiming otherwise is being careless. Broadly, confidentiality can be broken where there is a serious and immediate risk to your life or someone else, or where a court compels disclosure. Those exceptions are narrow and identical for every client. Everything outside them stays in the room permanently, and I will set out the exact limits before you tell me anything.
Then we do not use weekly sessions as the format. I work across time zones as standard, early mornings and late evenings are genuinely available, and sessions can move at short notice without a punitive cancellation policy. Some clients compress a block of sessions into a fortnight while in one location, then take a gap. Where a particular method needs a certain rhythm, I will say so rather than let the work quietly drift.
Yes, in Melbourne, arranged so that it is unremarkable. Most of my work with high-profile clients is online, both because it removes the exposure risk of a building and because it means therapy does not restart every time you change location.
Rarely what the public would guess. The recurring themes are not knowing who in your life is genuine, the fear of being found out despite the evidence, the crash after an intense project ends, being the person an entire family depends on, and the load of being publicly appraised by people who do not know you. Alongside those, entirely ordinary things: anxiety, sleep, grief, a marriage in difficulty, an ill parent.
A conversation that goes no further than the two of us
A free 15-minute consult, online, at a time that works around your diary. Nothing has to be disclosed in it.