This professional is available for new clients.
This professional is available for new clients.
About me
I am an HCPC registered Psychologist and Doctor of Counselling Psychology offering psychotherapy underpinned by a contemporary reading of the most relevant literature. I work from a psychodynamic, systemic and sometimes cognitive behavioural perspective, integrating these to offer tailored ways of understanding and working with issues that will be unique to each person and set of circumstances. Most of the work happens in the room, though sometimes we might also set things outside of it, where appropriate.
I am happy to work with complexity and will consider working with most presenting issues.
Training, qualifications & experience
I completed a four year Masters degree in Philosophy and Psychology at Edinburgh University in 2001, following which I undertook a postgraduate diploma in Law leading to roles in:
- Legal services -1.5 yrs
- Probation Service Officer (Drugs work)- 1.5 yrs
Having attended evening classes in contemporary dance during this period, I subsequently auditioned and won a scholarship to London Contemporary Dance Schools' postgraduate performance programme- Edge, where we worked with choreographers and toured work. I took a number of professional dance roles before settling in Bristol to continue psychology training, leading to the following role, some of which were simultaneous:
- Low Intensity Therapist (IAPT- primary care CBT); support work (forensics, learning disabilities) - 2 yrs
- Assistant Psychologist roles (research, forensics, autism) - 3.5 yrs
- NHS bank support work (part time) overlapping with Doctoral Training (inpatient mental health, forensics, eating disorders, child and adolescent) - 4.5 yrs
- Honorary Doctoral therapist roles (step 4 psychology, high intensity CBT, group work in personality disorder service, family therapy) - 4.5 yrs
My Doctoral training commenced in 2016 and I completed it in 2021, funded through the above roles. I started to offer therapy in private practice in 2019 under a BACP registration and am now registered wholly with the HCPC (PYL040673). I have since worked mostly in private practice, in Devon. For the past 10 months I have worked as a team psychologist in the local Community Mental Health Team near Redruth and I am now starting back in private practice again from my new base in Cornwall.
Member organisations
school Registered / Accredited
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.
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.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Therapies offered
Photos & videos
Fees
£85.00 - £125.00
Additional information
I charge £85 for in person sessions and £125 for online work.
When I work
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I am happy to accomodate early or later sessions to fit in with work, within a regular pattern of work together.
Further information
I tend not to understand people's difficulties in terms of mental health diagnoses, given the lack of reliability and validity for these constructs.
There is a good literature to guide our thinking and action however, nicely summarised in Van Der Kolk's - The Body Keeps the Score, that he notes has now outsold the DSM manual (where the diagnoses come from).
I am particularly interested in neurodevelopmental evidence that is increasingly linking our understanding of affect based and relational psychopathology to depth therapy, perhaps most appropriately termed contemporary psychodynamic, or neuropsychoanalysis (Solms et al.). This draws on the work of Allan Schore, Jaak Panksepp, Mark Solms, Antonio Damasio, Van Der Kolk and many other from 'the decade of the brain', which I integrate with the analytical ideas of the British Independent Group - Winnicott, Fairburn, Bowlby, Casement, Bolas; and the evolution of useful Freudian ideas and practices with a contemporary recognition of the need for experiential, intersubjective and humanist qualities within a psychodynamic approach - Gill and Kohut.
A safe working relationship is the starting point for the work, complemented by psychological formulation and empathic observation. Therapeutic change is mainly relationally based, allowing feelings that may not previously have been felt to be known; together with an increasing capacity to draw on an evolving 'cognitive' map, to orient the internal and external landscapes to. Integration occurs gradually, over time. Things become easier, there is less to fear, more capacity to be interested, and greater inner awareness upon which to base increasingly congruent external decisions.
