About Me

I am qualified as a UKCP integrative psychotherapist, but my journey towards that has involved learning experiences and skills acquired in alternative education and the charitable sector over many years, working to support people to overcome challenges and obstacles within themselves as well as external barriers to life satisfaction, participation, enriching relationships and emotional wellness.

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My background originates in sports psychology, exploring the inner game of sports performance and the impact of anxiety or sports performance.  This led on to training, qualifications and employment in personal life coaching and developing young people.  Later, I undertook postgraduate study through Derby University and the Atlow Mill Centre for Emotional Education to understand more about emotions and the brain.  I further trained in Transactional Analysis at the Berne Institute and the Northern Guild for Counselling and Psychotherapy, where I draw on Transactional Analysis (TA) as well as many contemporary, psychological evidence-based approaches to human development, recovery, change and transformation , I have undertaken additional training studying with Janina Fisher, a world expert in complex trauma, and with Dr Russ Harris in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I also utilise Internal Family Systems (IFS)

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There are so many psychological theories I have found useful, and no one size fits all.  I would say I am eclectic and integrative, humanistic whilst also being spiritually minded. Here are a few of the areas that I find so helpful in therapy.

• Trauma-informed approaches to recovery so that the past no longer presents itself in the present moment.

• Working with the developmental need to create experiences now that you didn’t get then.

• I utilize Transactional analysis and Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a way of understanding personality, ego functioning and the higher self.

• I work with the multi-disciplinary framework of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and attachment

• I promote mindfulness-based cognitive behavioural models, particularly Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)  to improve psychological flexibility and optimal wellbeing.