Christi Gadd Clinical & Neuropsychologist

Christi Gadd Clinical & Neuropsychologist Clinical Psychologist in Garsfontein/Faerie Glen, Pretoria East. I'm intrigued by the essence of hum

I am a clinical psychologist with a passion for human relationships. I enjoy working with individuals, couples and families in order to assist them in dealing with whichever challenge they are currently facing. The human brain and the manner in which it regulates our behaviour intrigues me. In this regard, I provide psychotherapy to assist a person and his/her family in adjusting to the impact of

a brain injury or illness. I am employed full-time at 1 Military Hospital, where I am responsible for the neuro-rehabilitation ward. I also run an after hours private practice in Faerie Glen, Pretoria-East.

My sister can see my location right now. She's 6,000 km away.Half my life is in Dubai; the people I love are scattered a...
13/08/2026

My sister can see my location right now. She's 6,000 km away.

Half my life is in Dubai; the people I love are scattered across South Africa, Belgium, Germany and France. Emigrants used to leave with letters and expensive phone calls. Now my mornings unfold in real time for people on three continents — and on the hard days I'm grateful for every pixel of it.

And still, every expat carries the same question: how do we stay close, actually close, from this far away?

Couples research offers a small answer: bids for connection — Gottman's term for the tiny offers that say, turn toward me. "How was the birthday party?" "Did you get that cute dress?" "How's the crochet blanket coming along — the one I started when I was with you?" "I haven't seen you on Strava this week — everything ok?" Bids live in objects too: the leopard-print skirt she sent me from Belgium, the red dress we bought together in St Gervais.

Access tells someone where you are. A bid tells them they matter.

Living between Dubai and South Africa — and working as a clinical psychologist with expat couples and families — I've stopped measuring closeness in messages per day. I measure it in the small bids only my people would know to send.

Which bid is yours — a question, a photo, or a voice note?

Tea time thoughts in between sessions, reflecting on the deep privilege it is to do this job.I stand in awe of the coura...
10/08/2026

Tea time thoughts in between sessions, reflecting on the deep privilege it is to do this job.

I stand in awe of the courage it takes for people to trust me with their lives, and to hear the honest, sometimes painful feedback that is needed to get them unstuck.

Friendship in adulthood is paradoxical. The more you go out trying to make friends, the more strained the encounters can...
05/08/2026

Friendship in adulthood is paradoxical. The more you go out trying to make friends, the more strained the encounters can feel. Friendship doesn’t quite respond to being aimed at.

What does work, in my experience, is showing up where the things you actually love are happening. The music show. The art class. The running group. The gym. The book club. Show up because you wanted to be there anyway. The people who are also there will be the people who can become your tribe.

Test everything. Keep the bits that you love.

I see this lands repeatedly in my couples and individual work in Dubai too — community follows interests, rarely the other way round.

From the same conversation.

Where did your people find you?

https://www.christigaddpsychology.co.za/adjusting-to-expat-life-uae/

27/07/2026

So many of us default to more. It’s a quiet route to burnout, and it never feels like burnout at the time.

More clients, more books, more workshops, more hours. When we’re not sure we’re good enough at something, the instinct is to work harder at it.

But something happens when we stop. When we get away from all of it and let our minds run free, things start integrating on their own — an idea from a book read months ago, a formulation or a pattern that wouldn’t quite come clear.

None of that happened while I was working harder. It happened here, doing very little. Soaking up a last bit of sun and sea before heading back to Dubai.

I’ve still been reading. But for the fun of it, rather than to learn something. It’s the Yalom I’ve been underlining all week, and his point is that this isn’t work you finish. He was in his nineties and still at it.

Brooke McAlary:

“I used to believe that I could do everything and be everywhere. And I absolutely can do all these things. But not at the same time. Not on the same day. Realizing that was delightful freedom.”

I’m going home with a deeper sense of being human. I think that makes me a better therapist, more than another workshop would have. And I suspect it’s the same in most work, not just mine.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re not enough — have you tried doing less, to see what happens?

More holiday reading, and my heart keeps going: yes. That’s who I want to be as a therapist — someone who keeps examinin...
26/07/2026

More holiday reading, and my heart keeps going: yes. That’s who I want to be as a therapist — someone who keeps examining herself.

Knowing my own biases as honestly as I know my strengths is uncomfortable. It’s also what makes the work possible. What I haven’t looked at in myself, I’ll miss in someone else.

And it isn’t something you read once and have. It’s years of getting to know yourself, as a person and as a therapist, and it doesn’t finish. Yalom was in his nineties and still busy with it. It’s something we work towards, not something we ever achieve.

📖 Hour of the Heart — Irvin D. Yalom & Benjamin Yalom

Today’s holiday learning 🇸🇨There’s a monument here for the Moutya — drumming and song created by enslaved communities in...
25/07/2026

Today’s holiday learning 🇸🇨

There’s a monument here for the Moutya — drumming and song created by enslaved communities in the Seychelles. They’d gather at night because it was the only time and space they had to grieve, protest, and say what couldn’t be said in daylight. In 2021, UNESCO recognised it as Intangible Cultural Heritage.

What gets me is how old this idea actually is. Long before “narrative therapy” was a term, people already knew that rhythm and repetition could hold what words couldn’t.

I see a version of it in session all the time — couples circling something they don’t have language for yet, until they find a way to finally say it to each other.

Story, rhythm, movement — we’ve been using them to heal for a lot longer than therapy has existed. This monument is just proof someone thought to write it down.

Holiday reading 📖“Intimacy requires vulnerability: you can’t expect your friend, relative, or partner to be open to you ...
24/07/2026

Holiday reading 📖

“Intimacy requires vulnerability: you can’t expect your friend, relative, or partner to be open to you unless you are willing to be open to them.”

Most of us have felt this go wrong before — vulnerability met with something dreadful, so we build walls and stop opening up. But here’s the catch: if we never risk it again, we never get the connection we’re craving.

Sometimes the best therapy reading happens by the pool. 🌴

— From “Hour of the Heart” by Irvin D. Yalom & Benjamin Yalom

When you move abroad, you meet people constantly — coffees, welcome drinks, group chats that fill within a week. And sti...
22/07/2026

When you move abroad, you meet people constantly — coffees, welcome drinks, group chats that fill within a week. And still, months in, a lot of people in Dubai describe feeling oddly unmet.

Connection in an expat context is much less about meeting people than it is about staying. It is about who is still there after the novelty fades, after another friend’s contract ends, after you have both seen each other on a flat day.

Meeting is easy here. Staying is the slower work — and it is the part that actually holds.

What has helped you move from meeting people to staying with them?

— The Glamour and the Grief, a series on expat life

Read the full reflection on the blog: https://www.christigaddpsychology.co.za/becoming-an-expat-glamour-and-grief/

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633 Windsor Avenue
Pretoria
0081

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Tuesday 12:00 - 19:00
Wednesday 12:00 - 19:00
Thursday 12:00 - 19:00
Friday 12:00 - 19:00

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