Experience, Training, and Qualifications
 

Training & Qualifications

• I am a BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) accredited psychotherapy/counsellor.

• I have a Counselling Foundation qualification and a Masters in Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling.

• I have British Psychological Society (BPS) approved certificates in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), including training in an introduction to CBT, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, guilt, social anxiety, working with anger problems, poor impulse control, working with suicide, and depression.

• I am an Eye-Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapist. This is primarily a trauma-specific approach which helps people to identify and process their traumatic memories to enable them to find some relief and new meaning with regards to their experiences.

• Interpersonal or Psychodynamic-Based Psychotherapy. I have no formal training in this approach although it is an essential component of how I work. I receive regular supervision when working this way which is based on how the relationship between client and therapist elicits crucial information about the patterns you may have developed from other significant relationships in the your life, especially your childhood. By identifying these patterns through our relationship we are able to break them more effectively.

• Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) training, including training in regulating emotions.

• Solution-Focused Therapy training. This approach focuses primarily on identifying and placing more attention on a person's strengths and resilience to enable them to better manage or "solve" their problems.

• Mindfulness training. One element of this approahch that I incorporate into my practice is how our relationship to thoughts, emotions, and others can offer change without needing to necessarily change those thoughts, emotions, and others. This approach also emphasises an observational and non-judgmental stance towards oneself and others.

• Schema Therapy. Although I have no formal training in this approach, I have a keen interest in it, which primarily focuses on how people develop understandings or "schemas" about themselves and others that tend to lead them to become emotionally and relationally stuck, finding themselves in the same difficulties time and time again. By becoming more aware of the schemas being activated, people can learn to change the relationship with themselves and others, leading to meaningful growth.

 

Experience

For more than 13 years I have worked with hundreds of people dealing with a range of difficulties in a variety of contexts, including

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• Many years working as a student therapist/counsellor in universities. This has involved working with both undergraduates and postgraduates, as well as students from an diverse range of cultural and religious backgrounds.

• Working privately for over 9 years.

• Working with people in a local low-cost counselling centre. This involved offering free-to-low cost counselling to people from the community for many years.

• Working with offenders in prison.

• Working with people in a number of drug and alcohol recovery/rehabilitation centres, including facilitating group work.

 

Apart from having worked with many adults and older adults, I have lots of experience working with young people and the challenges that they tend to face, as well as experience working with high-risk groups (e.g. suicide, self-harm, trauma, complex issues, etc.). This experience has encouraged me to develop my knowledge and skills in order to accommodate a wide range of issues, which I still continue to develop and refine. My further training in other therapeutic approaches means that I tend to integrate approaches that best suit each individual client.