About Me

I am a Registered member of the BACP as well as a Registered Practitioner member of COSCA. I am bound by their code of ethics and good practice. I attend regular supervision. Having worked in mental health for many years with families, carers, adults and children, I consider this to be invaluable in my work as a therapist. I also hold personal indemnity insurance.

My first degree was to be in psychology, however after two years of study I got very interested in gender differences, sociology, social anthropology etc. I wanted to keep my options open as I was enjoying the process of learning, having gone to University at the age of 30. After that I was awarded a scholarship and did an MSc in Population & Reproductive Health. My dissertation was on domestic violence, this drew me back into the realm of psychology. Having researched the effects of domestic abuse and its impact on individuals and their families etc. It became evident that what affects a person physically also has a psychological effect on them and vice versa.

Over the past few years I have worked with carers, caring for someone who may attract a diagnosis of personality disorder. On completing my MSc in counselling/psychotherapy I researched the resilience of carers caring for someone who may attract this diagnosis. This too was enlightening as many people struggle with this mental illness without ever being given the diagnosis or more importantly the help to mange their difficulties. This also has a profound effect on their families too.

As I stated in my introduction mental health and well-being is everyone’s business. My philosophy is that it’s not about having a mental illness/diagnosis but an understanding of what a person experiences in their life. Having an understanding of why you may feel the way you do is the first step to enabling a person to do something about it. We can only make these changes ourselves, we can’t make other people change, my role as a therapist is to help you on that journey.

There are many different approaches to therapy. The one I use most is transactional analysis, which concentrates on how we interact with each other. “Transactional analysis (TA) is a technique that investigates human relationships by focusing on the precise content of people’s interactions. TA is a powerful way of analysing how people deal with each other and how they can manage their lives by correcting their behavioural mistakes”. (Claude Steiner: Emotional Literacy, 2003) I consider myself as an integrative therapist I use other approaches as well where they suit my clients better.