Lal Hitchcock MA, Dip HIP

Training, qualifications & experience

Working with Transgender Clients, with Lynda Quick, April/May 2018

UMOT (The Unmaking of Them) training in working with Boarding School Survivors 2017-2018

Psychosocial group co-facilitation, for the British Red Cross, The Verne Immigration Removal Centre, Portland, May - December 2016

Peer Support facilitation, Yeovil, Somerset (Chard W.A.T.CH Project) 2016

Self Management co-facilitation, Yeovil Somerset (Somerset Partnership NHS in collaboration with the W.A.T.CH. Project, Chard, Somerset) 2016

MA and Diploma in Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy, BCPC (Bath Centre for Psychotherapy & Counselling) 2010 - 2015

Mental Health placements: Rowan Ward, Yeovil, Somerset, and Chard W.A.T.CH Project, Chard, Somerset 2012/13

Cruse Bereavement Volunteer, 2010 - 2015

Foundation Year, Bath Centre for Psychotherapy & Counselling 2002/03

BA Hons in Fine Art (sculpture and printmaking) University of Northumbria 1975 -1978

Foundation Course, Winchester School of Art 1974/75

Other areas of counselling I deal with

Constipation and IBS (irritable bowel syndrome)

Gastrointestinal symptoms with no apparent physical cause

Loss of creativity/developing creative potential

Living with the after-effects of boarding school

Further information

Psychotherapy is not a quick fix, which is why I prefer to work long-term (months/years) rather than short term with clients; it allows me time to really get to know the way you approach things, your history, the characters in your life and what they mean to you. Therapy works best on a regular, weekly basis. This creates continuity. Many people come to therapy having experienced broken or inconsistent relationships, and the regularity of weekly therapy can be an introduction to a more consistent way of relating, enabling a mutual trust to develop.

I am especially interested in different ways of coping with loss, in particular death, bereavement and the climate crisis. I am a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance.

My research area has been the relationship between the gut and the psyche: how inexpressible or unacceptable thoughts, feelings and experiences are sometimes located in, and expressed by our bodies. Bringing these feelings to consciousness and articulating them can help to alleviate painful or embarrassing gastric symptoms.

As an artist, I am also concerned with blocks to creativity - what stops us from initiating a project, or completing what we have so nearly finished? Does making fulfill a therapeutic need, and if so, is this undermined by the loneliness that is so often a prerequisite for creativity?