Jo Cook
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This professional is available for new clients.
This professional is available for new clients.
About me
I’m an EMDR-trained psychotherapist and psychologist who focusses on building deep permanent change for my clients so that you can move forward through life feeling more free and more content. I work in-person or online to support you to be able to live how you choose rather than by someone else’s rules. We can work to stop you being held back or weighed down by difficult feelings and past experiences.
Therapy can be a big investment of time, energy and money, and sometimes our difficulties feel like they’re just never going to change. That’s why I work with EMDR alongside conventional talking therapy. It is a very powerful way of working, approved by both the NHS and World Health Organisation. It is best known for being the Gold Standard treatment for PTSD, and it is radically effective for trauma symptoms. Evidence now also shows that common difficulties like anxiety, depression, low self-worth, and feelings of powerlessness are also transformed by intelligently applied EMDR.
For those clients willing to courageously work with their difficult thoughts and feelings rather than avoid them, my evidence-based way of working with EMDR can arguably create deeper and wider change in a shorter time-frame than any other approach. That is not to say that all journeys are quick, but if EMDR suits you it will be amongst the swiftest possible routes to change.
There is also still plenty of space for you to talk, share, be heard, and cared for in therapy with me. But if you prefer to choose privacy, EMDR can also be a surprisingly private form of therapy and in many cases you can work on issues and yet never have to describe them or say them out loud. I personalise the approach to each person and your unique needs. Why not book an initial consultation and find out how it might work for you.
Taking the first step to ask for help can feel daunting and uncertain, but it's the beginning of change. I have supported adults of many ages and stages of life, facing many different challenges. Together we can build a therapeutic relationship that will allow you to face whatever challenges you, move past it and onwards into a brighter, lighter future.
Training, qualifications & experience
I began my journey towards becoming a therapist with a BSc(Hons) in Psychology from Birmingham University. I went on to work in marketing, advertising and public relations. Later I moved into Local Government leading online communications projects for two major Councils in the North of England before becoming a senior civil servant in the Department of Health where I worked on policies to do with GPs and Primary Care services including mental health provision.
When I had children I took time out for them and to train as a yoga teacher. I did years of voluntary support and training work with a domestic violence charity, and then trained professionally as Counsellor and Psychotherapist, I gained a Postgraduate distinction in Counselling and Psychotherapy from Leeds Beckett University in 2019.
My initial post-graduate training focussed on a relational approach. This means I work guided by the belief that the single most important thing that achieves change is the relationship between me and you. This isn’t blind faith, scientific study after study, across all types of therapy, and across decades has found that the single most important factor is the relationship between the two (or three in couples counselling) people in the therapy room.
After I gained my BACP Accreditation I also trained in EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) which has transformed my practice. Traditional talking therapies are wonderful at raising self-awareness of our issues and where they come from, but often people get stuck at the “so what can I do about it” stage. EMDR, as I use it, offers an empowering practical answer to that question.
Bad memories and difficult experiences of all kinds can sink deep into us and alter who we feel we are and what we expect from the world. The healthy version of each of us would feel “I’m pretty OK” and we should feel (assuming you rationally are safe) that the world and people around us are “safe enough to be in/with”. Not perfection but a comfortable OK feeling most of the time. However most mental health difficulties strip away that safety and OK-ness and leave us feeling irrationally negative things about ourselves and/or the world around us. And we can get trapped in cycles of coping with these difficulties that actually only keep us stuck.
The above is what we call Complex-Trauma, it’s often quieter and less obvious than classic PTSD, sometimes we can’t access memories of the original events at all, but the effects are just as deep and EMDR is an excellent evidence-based way to help it heal.
So, I bring a variety of experience, training, and professionalism to my work, but mostly I bring myself to meet you, person to person. That's where we'll begin and that's where we will return again and again, building a therapeutic relationship together that enables you to change and move forward.
If you contact me and we meet, we will talk specifically about how this approach can personally work for you.
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.
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
Therapies offered
Fees
£70.00 per session
Free initial telephone session
Additional information
In intensive EMDR work we often use double length sessions these are simply charge at double the normal session fees
Clients usually attend for between 10 and 40 sessions (some usually double) although this can vary significantly and is always planned and agreed on a personal basis.
When I work
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Available appointment slots change frequently, so please get in touch with your requirements.
