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 to training, qualifications and employment in personal life coaching and developing 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 many contemporary, psychological evidence-based approaches to human development, recovery, change and transformation. I have undertaken additional training in complex trauma, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Transactional Analysis.

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I've been spiritually minded since my student days and I found my way in the Christian Faith Tradition, drawing on Celtic Spirituality.  I'm particularly interested in the practice of meditation and contemplative prayer and how these can support the healing of trauma in the therapy room. I attempt to offer spiritually sensitive psychotherapy and psychologically informed spiritual direction. I work openly with people of faith, no faith and other faiths in respectful dialogue, with the open heart of a life-long learner.

 

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 and biblically inspired. 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.

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

• I utilize Transactional analysis, as a way of understanding personality and ego functioning

• 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.