About me
Counselling works best when you can build a strong, trusting relationship with your therapist. My own experience of reading a therapist’s profile is that you usually don’t get much sense of who they are from the words on the page.
So how do you know if we might be a good fit to work together?
I hope that knowing the following three things about me will help you make that decision.
1) I believe that therapy is a chance to experiment with saying, doing, and feeling things that we feel are too risky in our normal lives, and I want to help you to do that. I will often bring your attention to what you are experiencing in your body. Our bodies have so much to tell us, and we can sometimes get distracted by our thoughts.
2) I have a particular interest in working with clients who may be struggling with bereavement, loss or unresolved grief and with new parents who may be finding the transitions and expectations of parenthood to be overwhelming.
Many women in the UK become mothers without the presence of their own mother and may find themselves facing both grief and motherhood at the same time. It can be such a vulnerable period, and I offer as much flexibility around timings and session format to any parents of young children as I can.
3) It doesn’t matter to me what your politics are, whether we agree or disagree. I’m there to listen without judgement and try to understand your personal experience.
However, I know it can matter deeply to some clients what values I might hold. I seek to understand you as a unique individual. But I recognise that systemic oppression can influence our lives profoundly, and it is not your job to educate me on how racism, misogyny, ableism, homophobia and a whole host of other prejudices might affect you. I continue to expand my understanding of equality, oppression, and intersectionality, and I hold socially and politically liberal views on the world.
In the end, the words on this page can only do so much to convey a sense of me to you. If you’re not sure whether we might work well together or you’d like to get a better sense of me, I offer a free 15-minute phone call. Please do reach out if you would like to know more or to book a session.
Training, qualifications & experience
I have volunteered and worked previously for St Christopher's Hospice in Sydenham as part of the bereavement service. For 4 years I worked with people who had been bereaved through many different circumstances. This included bereavement by suicide, from long term illness, sudden illness and accidents, and covered all manner of relationships.
I find that exploring what your relationship looks like now with the person who has died forms a huge part of the work and can help you make sense of the future.
More generally speaking, my counselling is integrative, primarily using person-centred and Gestalt approaches. Integrative means that I use the concepts and techniques from several different approaches in one blended style that best fits how I like to work.
Person-centred means I believe that part of my role as a therapist is to provide an environment where you feel accepted as who you are, and that I, as a therapist, am there to support your exploration as a co-traveller and not an authority figure.
Gestalt means in therapy, I will try to keep us grounded in the present moment to help build your awareness of how you relate to me, yourself, and the world. Focusing on your present experience (mind, body, and emotions) can help you to identify patterns and consider how you might make different choices. We might then experiment in a session with what those differences might be.
The above only captures the broad strokes of how I work - if you are interested in whether I use a particular approach or I’m familiar with a certain toolkit or a specific issue, please feel free to ask.
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
Postnatal anxiety, breastfeeding grief and other difficulties in the early years of parenting.
Therapies offered
Fees
£60.00 per session
When I work
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I try to provide additional flexibility for new parents including longer time slots.
