About me
Hello and welcome to my profile. I'm an approachable and experienced therapist (over twenty years) successfully helping people in their lives when difficulties such as anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship problems emerge. I'm interested in what you want from therapy and will support your personal process towards feeling whole, calm, and confident in the areas you want to focus on.
I offer sessions in-person outdoors, and online for those who are further afield.
I work outdoors as an eco-therapist as there are huge benefits to be had attending to our personal and psychological development in and amongst the natural world. In fact, psychotherapy that includes nature understands that we don't exist in isolation from the living world. So, when we feel lost, stuck and perhaps separate, taking therapy outdoors brings us into relationship with other natural processes, inviting us to feel more alive and engaged with our own lives.
With this approach we walk and/or sit together in woodland and open meadows that I know well, large enough to offer privacy. We might work creatively, and at times I may invite exercises to support different perspectives to be engaged with. The focus is always on what matters most to you.
The therapy I offer online is done through talking, some creative (Arts Therapy) methods and Lifespan Integration therapy. Lifespan Integration (or LI) is a trauma informed therapy that works to gently heal and clear trauma, attending to difficulties in relationships, and helps people to feel more solid, present and grounded in themselves. Lifespan Integration (or LI) is a body-mind therapy that works by repeating a timeline of memory cues, allowing different feelings, awareness and understanding to emerge, showing the client's body/brain (nervous system) that time has passed and they are not in the trauma any longer.
Having LI can feel astonishing to people receiving it as there is often a significant shift in how they feel in a short space of time. There are a number of different 'protocols' that focus the timeline to attend to different traumas and stages of life, as appropriate.
I am a registered arts therapist which means I offer creative ways for people to connect with their feelings and unconscious mind that inspires greater self awareness and change, than by just verbal means. When we work creatively (using our senses), we use more of the brain than when we simply talk. This is why working with the arts therapies, and approaches like LI and eco-therapy are more effective than sitting still on a chair talking through our problems.
If any of what I've spoken about here feels like it would work for you as a way forward, I would be happy to speak with you to consider if we would be a good 'fit' to support you. No matter how hard life feels right now, the one thing we can be sure of is that change is a certainty of life. I welcome you to contact me to consider what that might look like for you.
Training, qualifications & experience
For over 33 years I have worked in the field of human relations and personal development. Prior to becoming a therapist, I was an outdoor development trainer working with young people deemed at risk, a youth worker, and ran creative workshops including clowning, art and dance. Since qualifying as a therapist, I worked in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), lectured (associate)at Derby University and have been in private practice since 2008.
I am trained and qualified in the creative arts therapies (2003), dramatherapy (2005) (hcpc registered), lifespan integration therapy (2011) and nature-based therapy (2018), as well as creative approaches to supervision (2014).
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
Fees
£75.00 per session
Additional information
For those in financial hardship, I offer a reduced rate for a proportion of the people who I work with. If this applies to you and you would like to enquire if I have availability to offer a reduced rate, please email me.
For supervision, my rate for self-funded supervisees is £75 and organisation or employer funded is £80
Further information
I deliver CPD workshops for human relations practitioners who take their work outdoors, or are interested in developing an ecological practice to support their work or professional practice.
