About me
I am Christine Joanna Hart, an MBACP registered integrative psychotherapist, Sunday Times bestselling author, former Fleet Street investigative journalist and private investigator. My journalism includes bylines in The Sunday Times and Daily Mail, with appearances on BBC World Service and GMTV.
At first glance those may look like very different careers. I no longer think they are. I have spent my life looking for missing things.
After more than thirty years exploring psychology, trauma, psychotherapy and shamanic practice, I began turning the instincts of an investigator towards the inner world. Instead of asking only What is wrong with me?, I became interested in another question: Who is missing?
Human beings are not psychologically mono. Under trauma, abandonment, grief, shame, coercion or prolonged stress, one part of us may adapt to survive while another becomes hidden or exiled. Sometimes that is a frightened younger self. But sometimes what disappears is the powerful part: our confidence, creativity, ambition, sexuality, intelligence, voice or ability to know what we want.
I developed Exiled Self Sovereignty Therapy from this idea. My work combines integrative psychotherapy, parts work, attention to what you feel in the body, symbolism and imagination and, where appropriate, shamanic journeying and retrieval.
You may already understand your past and still find that something does not change. Perhaps you repeat the same relationship patterns, struggle to say no, experience anxiety you cannot explain, feel stuck despite knowing you are capable, or simply have the persistent feeling that you are no longer quite yourself.
We investigate that together.
Sometimes the work remains recognisably psychotherapeutic. At other times it may move into imagery, altered awareness or shamanic journeying. Where possible, I journey with you rather than disappearing into a journey on your behalf and returning to tell you what it means. You remain involved in your own investigation and free to understand what emerges psychologically, symbolically, spiritually or simply leave it unexplained.
A significant insight or retrieval can sometimes happen in a single session, although I don't promise instant healing and some work naturally takes longer. I don't sell packages designed to keep people in therapy unnecessarily. Some clients come with one particular problem or for a small number of sessions; others choose to work more deeply over time.
You may have spent years learning how to cope. Perhaps now we can find out who had to disappear in order for you to cope so well.
I am an MBACP registered integrative psychotherapist, Sunday Times bestselling author, former Fleet Street investigative journalist and private investigator. My journalism includes bylines in The Sunday Times and Daily Mail, with appearances on BBC World Service and GMTV.
At first glance those may look like very different careers. I no longer think they are. I have spent my life looking for missing things.
After more than thirty years exploring psychology, trauma, psychotherapy and shamanic practice, I began turning the instincts of an investigator towards the inner world. Instead of asking only What is wrong with me?, I became interested in another question: Who is missing?
Human beings are not psychologically mono. Under trauma, abandonment, grief, shame, coercion or prolonged stress, one part of us may adapt to survive while another becomes hidden or exiled. Sometimes that is a frightened younger self. But sometimes what disappears is the powerful part: our confidence, creativity, ambition, sexuality, intelligence, voice or ability to know what we want.
I developed Exiled Self Sovereignty Therapy from this idea. My work combines integrative psychotherapy, parts work, attention to what you feel in the body, symbolism and imagination and, where appropriate, shamanic journeying and retrieval.
You may already understand your past and still find that something does not change. Perhaps you repeat the same relationship patterns, struggle to say no, experience anxiety you cannot explain, feel stuck despite knowing you are capable, or simply have the persistent feeling that you are no longer quite yourself.
We investigate that together.
Sometimes the work remains recognisably psychotherapeutic. At other times it may move into imagery, altered awareness or shamanic journeying. Where possible, I journey with you rather than disappearing into a journey on your behalf and returning to tell you what it means. You remain involved in your own investigation and free to understand what emerges psychologically, symbolically, spiritually or simply leave it unexplained.
A significant insight or retrieval can sometimes happen in a single session, although I don't promise instant healing and some work naturally takes longer. I don't sell packages designed to keep people in therapy unnecessarily. Some clients come with one particular problem or for a small number of sessions; others choose to work more deeply over time.
You may have spent years learning how to cope. Perhaps now we can find out who had to disappear in order for you to cope so well.
Training, qualifications & experience
My route into psychotherapy has been an unusual one. Before training as an integrative psychotherapist, I spent more than thirty years investigating people, stories and, eventually, the workings of my own psyche.
I began my professional life in private investigation before moving into Fleet Street investigative journalism. My work included bylines in The Sunday Times and Daily Mail, and I became a Sunday Times bestselling author. I have also appeared in the media, including BBC World Service and GMTV.
Investigation taught me to look beneath the obvious explanation. What doesn't fit? What is missing? What happened immediately before things changed? What is the story underneath the story? Those questions have remained central to the way I work as a psychotherapist.
Alongside my professional career, I spent more than thirty years searching for answers in my own life. I explored psychotherapy, trauma work, psychology and primal therapy, eventually training professionally as an integrative psychotherapist and becoming an MBACP registered practitioner.
My search also took me beyond conventional psychotherapy. Following a near-death experience at nineteen, I became interested in altered states of consciousness, mysticism, symbolism and shamanic practice. I have explored these areas for more than thirty years, and they now inform the unusual way I work with clients.
Eventually I realised that my apparently different careers had something important in common: I had spent my life looking for missing things.
That insight led to the development of Exiled Self Sovereignty Therapy. I began applying the instincts of an investigator to the inner world. Instead of asking only Why do I feel like this?, I became interested in who might be missing.
We are not psychologically mono. Different parts of ourselves can carry different emotions, ages, memories, abilities and ways of surviving. Under trauma, abandonment, shame, difficult relationships or prolonged stress, one part may adapt brilliantly while another becomes hidden or exiled.
Sometimes what disappears is the vulnerable child. But sometimes it is precisely the part we later spend years trying to recover: our confidence, ambition, creativity, sexuality, intelligence, voice or ability to know what we want.
My therapeutic work therefore draws on integrative psychotherapy, parts work, embodied awareness, symbolism and imagination, alongside shamanic journeying and retrieval where appropriate. I am particularly interested in the point at which something felt in the body begins to reveal an image, memory, age, part or experience that words alone have not reached.
I don't impose a spiritual explanation on what emerges. An experience may be understood psychologically, symbolically, archetypally, spiritually, or simply left unexplained. What matters is whether it has meaning and value for the person experiencing it.
My approach has grown from formal psychotherapeutic training, decades of personal exploration and a professional lifetime spent learning how to investigate what lies beneath the visible story.
Eventually, the investigator turned inward.
Member organisations
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
Alongside more traditional therapeutic work, I also offer deeper approaches for those who feel that standard talking therapy has not reached what is actually driving their experience.
This can include parts-based work (similar to Internal Family Systems), as well as more experiential approaches such as guided imagery, symbolic work, and, where appropriate, practices often described as soul retrieval or past life exploration.
I also work with what some clients experience as “blocked” or held energy within the body or system, helping to release and integrate this in a way that feels grounded and manageable.
These approaches are always led by the individual and used carefully within a psychological framework, with the aim of increasing clarity, stability, and a stronger sense of self.
Therapies offered
Fees
£65.00 per session
Additional information
Sessions are available by telephone, Zoom, or in person.
Individual therapy by telephone: £65.00
Individual Therapy .......via Zoom; £75.00
Individual Therapy .......in Person: £85.00
Couples Therapy via telephone....£75.00
Couples therapy over Zoom..........£95.00
Couples Therapy in Person............£120.00
Extended 2 hour hypnotherapy session; £150
Home visits may be available by arrangement for an increased fee. I work with clients across London and internationally via telephone or Zoom.
Further information
You may already understand why you struggle. You may have talked about your childhood, recognised your relationship patterns and become extremely good at explaining yourself. Yet something still doesn't change. You still find yourself frightened when there appears to be nothing to fear, unable to say no, choosing people who diminish you, or knowing perfectly well that you are capable while somehow being unable to move forward. Perhaps you have lost your creativity, confidence, sexuality or ambition. Or perhaps there is simply a persistent feeling that you are no longer quite yourself.
Exiled Self Therapy approaches that feeling differently. Instead of asking only What is wrong with me?, we begin to investigate who might be missing.
Human beings are not psychologically mono. We contain different parts, states and ways of being, something recognised in different forms throughout psychology. Under trauma, abandonment, humiliation, coercion, grief or prolonged stress, one part of us may adapt to survive while another becomes hidden or exiled. The part that takes over is not necessarily the problem. It may have done an extraordinary job of keeping us functioning. But it may still be responding to a danger that disappeared decades ago, while somewhere behind it is a part of ourselves that we now desperately need.
Sometimes that is the frightened child. But sometimes the person who disappeared was the powerful one: the clever self, the ambitious self, the artist, the sensual self, the person who could speak up, trust herself, receive love or simply know what she wanted. Sometimes we spend years trying to acquire qualities we believe we lack when the more interesting question is whether we once possessed them and where they went.
An unusual form of therapy
I am an integrative psychotherapist, but Exiled Self Therapy is deliberately unusual. My work also draws upon parts work, bodily awareness, symbolism, imagination and more than thirty years of shamanic and mystical exploration.
We may begin with an ordinary problem in your present life and then explore where you feel it in your body. Is it in your stomach, throat, chest or somewhere else? Does it feel heavy, tight, cold, blocked or empty? Rather than immediately analysing the sensation, we become curious about it. It may lead to a memory, an age, an image, a place, a younger self or something entirely unexpected.
Sometimes the work remains recognisably psychotherapeutic. At other times it can move into imagery, altered awareness or shamanic journeying and retrieval. Where possible, I journey with the client rather than disappearing into a journey on their behalf and returning with an authoritative interpretation. I want you to participate in your own investigation, to see what you see, question it and decide what meaning it has for you.
I don't require you to believe that an experience is literally spiritual. Something that emerges may be understood psychologically, symbolically, archetypally, spiritually or simply left unexplained. We don't have to decide what something is before we investigate what it has to tell us.
Retrieval
The aim is not simply to understand why you became the person you are. It is to discover whether something valuable was lost in the process.
Retrieval can sometimes be surprisingly immediate. A single session may uncover or bring back something significant, although I do not promise instant healing and some work naturally takes longer. You may recognise a part of yourself you had forgotten, understand why a particular pattern has persisted, discover the age at which something changed, or meet the part that has been protecting you.
Retrieval is not quite the end of the story. What returns has to find a place in your present life. The frightened child needs to discover that the original danger has passed. The ambitious adolescent may need permission to want things again. The creative self needs somewhere to create. The person who once had a voice needs opportunities to use it. This is where retrieval becomes integration, and integration begins to become sovereignty.
As I came to understand through my own work, the problem is not always absence of power. Sometimes it is power without ownership.
Working with me
You do not need to understand parts therapy or know anything about shamanism before coming to see me. You may simply be struggling with anxiety, grief, a relationship, people-pleasing, confidence, feeling stuck, repeating an old pattern or the unsettling sense that you have somehow disappeared from your own life.
Some people come with one particular issue and choose only a small number of sessions. Others want to work more deeply over time. I don't sell packages designed to keep people in therapy unnecessarily. Sometimes one session can uncover something important; sometimes retrieval opens a longer piece of work. We follow what is actually happening rather than deciding in advance how many sessions you ought to need.
Exiled Self Therapy sessions are £70 for 60 minutes.
The purpose is not to turn you into somebody new. It is to investigate what happened to the person you already were, what had to change in order for you to survive, and whether the qualities you now believe you have lost may still be there.
You may have spent years learning how to cope.
Perhaps now we can find out who had to disappear in order for you to cope so well.
