Monia Brizzi
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About me
Creative Solutions to Complex Problems
I am a BPS Senior Existential Chartered Psychologist Specialising in Psychotherapy and Associate Fellow, HCPC Registered Practitioner Psychologist, EFPA Registered Psychologist (Clinical and Health), APA International Affiliate, BACP Counselling and Psychotherapy Practitioner, and Clinical Supervisor. I specialise in multi-modal approaches to psychological consultation, psychotherapy, counselling and supervision. I have over 20 years of clinical experience in psychology working in the NHS, charity and private sectors with a wide range of issues, disorders and areas of concern both with individuals and with couples. I have also lectured in psychology and psychotherapy at university undergraduate and postgraduate levels, conducted specialist psychological research and worked on several large Wellcome Trust and Arts Council funded multidisciplinary research projects (see here for example). For over 13 years I have been a clinician at the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine in London and a member of the peer review panel of the Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis.
I assist individuals and couples across the world in confronting and overcoming a broad range of emotional, psychosomatic, cognitive, behavioural, health and performance related issues, challenges and pressures be they personal or interpersonal, home or work related. I don't believe that one size fits all, hence my therapeutic practice is individually tailored to the full-bodied and multidimensional uniqueness of each client taking into consideration their background, present circumstances and future aspirations. I offer solution-focused, brief and depth interventions and I also deliver training, clinical supervision and consultancy to mental health and other medical specialists.
"I have worked alongside Monia Brizzi, the psychologist and psychotherapist, for quite some time now, having met her when we gave lectures and webinars together for The British Association for Performing Arts Medicine (BAPAM). I am always deeply impressed by Monia’s depth of understanding of the human mind when health is a challenge. And in clinical practice, Monia Brizzi is one of the most talented and insightful psychologists with whom I have had the pleasure to work. I often refer patients to her whose complex physical pain presentations may be compounded by deep, often unconscious psychological responses to their pain. By gently and tactfully exploring these inner thoughts with kindness and patience, Monia can often bring considerable and lasting relief to patients, who feel deeply understood and helped in this way. Monia combines compassion and understanding with an expert theoretical basis for her work, and I can thoroughly recommend her as an expert and trusted colleague with whom it is often very illuminating to one’s own practice to discuss cases with her." Dr Anthony Ordman, Consultant in Pain Medicine (September 2022)
Training, qualifications & experience
From 1995 I undertook international Psychology and Psychotherapy training in Italy (Alma Mater Studiorum Universita' di Bologna - awarded EU-Canada Cooperation Programme in Higher Education Scholarship), Canada (York University, Toronto) and the UK (LMU and Regent's University London). I qualified as a Chartered Existential Counselling Psychologist at Regent's University in 2006 and since early 2008 my clinical work is regularly supervised by Professor Ernesto Spinelli.
I studied Psychology in my home town at the University of Bologna for two years until in 1997 I was awarded a full international scholarship to study with Professors David Rennie (Humanistic Psychology and Counselling) and Raymond Fancher (Psychodynamic Psychology and Counselling) at York University in Toronto. After five years studying and working as a volunteer in crisis and suicide prevention and intervention at the Distress Centre in Toronto I came to London in 2002 and specialised in Cognitive-Behavioural approaches at London Metropolitan University and successively in more Experiential-Relational modalities at Regent's University- funded by a NHS Bursary awarded in my clinical practicum at Kingston Hospital Foundation Trust. I successively practiced in the NHS and other organisations and lectured with psychology, counselling and medical students, publishing and presenting my research in peer-reviewed professional journals and at several international scientific conferences, multidisciplinary panels, symposia, festivals and community outreach programs. Based upon my publications I was awarded a two-years AHRC bursary to undertake social science postgraduate research on the psychosocial aspects of emotions and their function in the process of human individuation by the University of Brighton.
Professional Registrations and Affiliations:
- British Psychological Society (BPS)
- Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC)
- European Federation of Psychologists' Associations (EFPA)
- British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)
- Assessing Psychologist & Clinical Consultant, British Association for Performing Arts Medicine
- Reviewer & Previous Committee Member, Society for Existential Analysis
- Senior Practitioner, BPS Register of Psychologists Specialising in Psychotherapy
- Advanced Clinical Supervision Group Member, Therapy Harley Street
- Specialist Advisor, Music and Mental Health Group
- Healthy Conservatoires Network Member
Member organisations
Being registered/accredited with a professional body means an individual must have achieved a substantial level of training and experience approved by their member organisation.
British Psychological Society
The HCPC are an independent, UK-wide health regulator. They set standards of professional training, performance and conduct for 16 professions.
They keep a register of health professionals who meet their standards, and they take action if registered health professionals fall below those standards. They were created by a piece of legislation called the Health Professions Order 2001.
Registration means that a health professional meets national standards for their professional training, performance and conduct.
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred).
Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision.
Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training.
All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Other areas of counselling I deal with
Solution-Focused & Depth Approaches to Psychology, Psychotherapy, Clinical Consultancy, Supervision and Performance Coaching
I specialise in corporate and performing arts healthcare. Due to my particular interest in occupational health and in human potential, resilience and creativity I offer highly specialist psychological consultation for performing artists and business executives oriented at optimising their personal and professional practices toward more effective, foundational processing.
Established in 2007, our beautiful Psychological Health and Wellbeing Clinic is in the heart of Canary Wharf. With floor to ceiling windows and a private art collection, we offer a quiet and relaxing space for connecting to what matters to you most and what can get in the way of it, for taking perspective and facing concerns, neglected dimensions and areas of tension or disturbance, for finding what spurs you and composing new contrasts and vitalities.
www.rhinegold.co.uk/classical_music/health-wellbeing-performance-anxiety
Photos & videos
Fees
Additional information
I am registered with all healthcare and medical providers. I also work with The Royal Society of Musicians, Help Musicians UK, Equity Charitable Trust and other organisations.
Further information
'Words are just the notes. It's the ideas that form the melody. It's the ideas that give our life structure' - Irvin Yalom
I have a wide range of professional publications and conference presentations. To maximise the thoroughness and effectivity of interventions my work is informed by a rigorous psychological and psychotherapeutic evidence-base as well as by human science and mind-body research, existential medicine, process philosophy and the history and philosophy of psychology - see, for example: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/cosmological-questions
Perspectives in the Process of Becoming
My therapeutic and supervisory practice is guided by a threefold concern for:
1. What it means to be a human being living with others in the world;
2. How to shift from mere being (putting up with/coping) to well-being or eudaimonia, ancient Greek for the flourishing of life `('eu', good, and 'daimon', spirit). Key to this are: concrescence (i.e., the creative process of how individuals, families and teams 'keep it together' and integrate), contrast (i.e., the experience of vivid/complex rather than tamed/trivialised order) and beauty (i.e., satisfactory balancing act of complementarities and oppositions into harmony and coherence);
3. How to find purpose, value and joy, and embrace a life worth living or even 'the good life'.
Human beings are pattern and meaning making creatures - how can we create structures able to form, sustain, guide and ultimately propel us without overly entrapping, paralysing or stultifying us? How do we order our lives and maintain continuity and vigour amidst unpredictability, chaos and meaningless? Is the order in our lives simply an absence of disorder? Into what do we root ourselves amidst enormous impersonal forces surging outside our control? How do we hold fast to what remains the same while embracing and leveraging the quicksilver dynamism of an ever changing present? Can we balance disparate, and often irreconcilable dimensions of life? How do we exist as absolutely unique yet simultaneously interconnected parts of the enormously complex, often unsettling and bewildering, mysterious world we inhabit? Can we relate to and even harness the uncertainty, and corollary anxiety brought about by the Covid pandemic without losing ourselves and our lives as we've previously known them to be? How can we be in relation to ourselves, our communities and one another so that our passion and purpose might be activated rather than tamed? How do we maintain the meaning and steadfastness of things? How do we go with the flow and adapt to as yet unknown circumstance? What different personal experiences and social realities are created in the acts of connecting and disconnecting? What is it to orient ourselves to life in a way that effectively partakes in the co-creation of the kind of world that we not only can but, more importantly, aspire to live in? How do the remote and online modes of communication we now work with affect the intimacy, trust and continuity of our relationships? What type of vision can we embrace to fulfil our possibilities? How can we fully inhabit the small portion of the whole which is ours while keeping a wider perspective and sense of the bigger picture?
Selected Professional Publications, Seminars and Conference Presentations
Awareness of subconscious influences in complex mind-body presentations as a key to alleviating career-threatening symptomatologies. The Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare (ASPAH) Conference, 27 November 2022. Co-presented with Dr Anthony Ordman.
Managing Musicians Pain. 7 July 2021. The Royal Society of Musicians in partnership with the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine.
Chronic Pain in Performing Arts Medicine. 24 February 2021. British Association for Performing Arts Medicine Medical Education.
Dealing with Pain from a Physical and Psychological Perspective. 17 February 2021. The Royal Society of Musicians (RSM) in partnership with the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine (BAPAM).
Existential Reflections on Motherhood (with Naomi Stadlen). 10 May 2020. Society for Existential Analysis (SEA) Seminar.
Hermeneutic Circular - October 2018, April 2019, October 2019, and April 2020 Editions.
Phenomenology and the Arts: Five themes Through Music (2020) Existential Analysis, 31 (1): 66-81.
From Coaching to Care Panel. Clinicians and Educators Working Together to Support Performing Arts Health. 11 November 2019. British Association for Performing Arts Medicine Training Day. NVCO London.
Society for Existential Analysis & British Association for Performing Arts Medicine Joint Seminar, King’s College London, 2 November 2019. Co-convened with Emeritus Professor of Music at King's College London Daniel Leech-Wilkinson.
Musical Creativity and Performance as Relational Practices: Mandy Burvill in Conversation with Monia Brizzi. In Leech-Wilkinson, D. (2019-20). Challenging Performance: Classical Music Performance Norms and How to Escape Them.
Creativity and Wellbeing Week - Art and Psychology Encounter Review, with Ondine Smulders. Existential Analysis, 30 (2), July 2019.
Art and Psychology Encounter: Professor David Cotterrell in Conversation with Monia Brizzi. 16 June 2019. Creativity and Wellbeing Week.
Art and Anxiety: The Psychology of Creativity (2019). 6 March, University of Hertfordshire.
A Quantitative Report on Sexuality and Well-Being (2018) British Psychological Society (BPS) Psychology of Sexualities 20th Anniversary Conference 1998-2018: Reflecting Back, Looking Forwards. 6 July, BPS London Offices.
Cosmological Questions (2018) The Psychologist. British Psychological Society (BPS). April Issue, Vol. 31.
Arts Health Practitioners in Focus: Arts Specialist Psychologists and Psychotherapists. (August 2018). British Association for Performing Arts Medicine Newsletter.
Sound Mind. Health and Wellbeing: Performance Anxiety. (September 2018). Interview for Classical Music Magazine.
Cosmoscope Interdisciplinary Research Colloquium, Contemporary Art Practice (2017) University of Hertfordshire, 23 June.
A Phenomenological and Process Approach to Pattern and Meaning (2017) Interalia Magazine. February Issue.
Cosmoscope (2015-17) Wellcome Trust Funded Interdisciplinary Project. With Professor Simeon Nelson, Dr. Nick Rothwell, Dr. Robert Godman, Dr. Simon Walker-Samuel, Professor Richard Bower, Dr. Pete Edwards, Professor Andrew Goodwin and Daniel Bosia.
Performance and Existence (2014) British Association for Performing Arts Medicine (BAPAM) Psychosocial Day. 15 November, BAPAM Office.
Existing In-Between, Liminal Aesthetics and Embodied Ethics (2013) Anarchy in the Organism. UCLH Mac Millan Cancer Centre. Black Dog Publishing.
Human Science Research and Creativity’s Challenge to the Priority of the Subject in the Substantiation of Experience (2013) Creativity in Human Science Research, Methology and Theory. International Human Science Research (IHSR) Conference. 16 August, Aalborg University, Denmark. Co-presented with Professor Simeon Nelson.
Anima Mundi - The World Ensouled. Art and Psychology Experiential Encounter (2013) London Creativity and Wellbeing Week, London Art in Health Forum (LAHF). 22 June, Professor Simeon Nelson Studio.
Art, Psychology, and the Setting-Into-Work of Truth (2013) Critical Dialogues Interdisciplinary Lecture Series. 19 March, University of Hertfordshire.
Transience and Complexity in Anarchy in the Organism (2012) Anarchy in the Organism: Cancer as a Complex System Wellcome Trust Symposium. London Creativity and Wellbeing Week, London Art in Health Forum (LAHF). 15 June, Wellcome Collection Conference Centre. Commissioned by UCLH Arts.
Placebos for Art (2011) Behring Institute for Medical Research Dresden, Germany.
Science, Art and Belief: Lux Scientia Symposium (2011) Lumiere Festival. 18 November, St Oswald's Church Durham.
Complexity Differential in Evidence Based Practice (2010) E-Intentionality, Philosophy of AI and Cognitive Science, School of Science and Technology. 30 November, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex.
The Science of Psychology and the Art of Psychology: Difference or Continuity? (2010) Ways of Knowing: Art and Science's Shared Imagination. Perspectives from the Sciences, Humanities and Creative Arts Interdisciplinary Research Symposium. 2 October, Faculty of Science, Technology and Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire.
Comments on IAPT and HPC Statutory Regulation (2009) British Psychological Society, Psychotherapy Section Review No. 46.
The Art and Science of Happiness (2009) Brighton and Hove White Night Festival. 24 October, Phoenix Arts Association, Brighton.
The Active Commerce Between Minds and Reality: Radical Empiricism at the Origins and Forefront of Scientific Psychology (2009) E-Intentionality, Philosophy of AI and Cognitive Science, School of Science and Technology. 22 October, University of Sussex.
William James on Beliefs, Values and the Psychology of Experience (2009) British Psychological Society Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section Annual Conference. Consciousness and Belief: How Do Beliefs Affect Experience? 13 September, St Anne's College, University of Oxford.
A Critical Psychology of Life (2009) Towards a Philosophy of Life, Conference. 27 June, Liverpool Hope University.
Embodied Consciousness and the Psychological Continuum (2008) British Psychological Society, Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section Workshop: Conscious Intention, Agency and Free Will. 22 November, BPS London Offices.
On Being Anxious and Joyous in the World: Heidegger' s Reconceptualisation of Subjectivity (2008) Subjectivity International Conference in Critical Psychology, Cultural Studies and Social Theory. 29 June, Cardiff University. With Kevin Harrison.
Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy as Human Science (2008) 26 February, Brighton Science Festival.
Psychosocial Perspectives on Health and Well-Being (2008) American Association for Behavioural and Social Sciences Annual Conference. 7 February, Flamingo, Las Vegas, USA.
Michel Serres' White Noise and the Essence of Relation (2008) Brighton and Hove White Night Festival. 25 October, Phoenix Arts Association, Brighton.
Theorising Joy as Psychosocial Process, Psychosocial Studies as a Transdisciplinary Adventure Symposium (2007) 12th Biannual Conference of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology (ISTP) - Theoretical Psychology Beyond Borders: Transdisciplinarity and Internationalization. 20 June, York University, Toronto, Canada.
What Is Called a Journey? On Wonder and Wandering. (2007) Brussels Meets Brighton: The Meta-Hub. 1-2 May, Shunt Lounge and Theatre Company, London. Performed with Anna Dumitriu, Director of IUR.
Re-Searching and Exploring Joy: A Critical Incident (2007) Critical Incident at Brighton Fringe Festival. 23 May, The Freeman Centre, University of Sussex.
A Theoretical Interrogation of the Distinction Between 'Positive' and 'Negative' Affects Informed by the History and Philosophy of Psychology (2007) British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Section Annual Conference. 4 April, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.
Challenging Everyday Routinisations of the Emotional Feedback System (2006) 17 November, Whitechapel Gallery, London.
Heidegger and Joy (2005) Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, 16 (2): 354-369.
