About me
Grief, burnout, midlife, illness, and the experiences that have no name yet.
Hello, I'm Richard, a BACP accredited counsellor and psychotherapist in Wiltshire, working indoors, outdoors in woodland, and online across the UK.
There are no maps for these times. You probably find yourself here because something in your own life has come loose.
Maybe someone has died and everyone around you seems to have moved on. Maybe you are running on empty and cannot remember the last thing you felt properly. Maybe midlife arrived and the story you were living has quietly stopped making sense. Maybe illness has changed the terms of your life without asking. Maybe something is opening in you that you have no language for, and no one to tell.
You are not broken. You are standing at a threshold. Thresholds ask something of us.
Many of the people I see are men who have never said any of this out loud, some of whom never expected to be talking to a therapist at all. You do not need the right words to begin. That is what the work is for.
Who I am
I have spent thirty years in creative and psychological work: first as an actor and musician, including lead roles in The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables; then twenty five years coaching leaders through messy, complex change; and now in practice as a therapist, writer and poet. My grief work is shaped by an apprenticeship with Francis Weller.
I am the current Bard of Bath and Poet in Residence at the Dyson Cancer Centre, Royal United Hospitals Bath (NHS).
What I work with
Grief and loss. Burnout. Midlife and the questions it brings. Chronic illness. Spiritual emergence: the experiences that do not fit tidily into a diagnosis. Endings and beginnings of every kind.
Alongside the training, I bring lived experience to each of these. I am not speaking to you from the far side of anything.
How I work
I weave evidence based psychotherapy together with older, earth honouring ways of understanding a life.
Much of my work happens outside: in woodland, beside water, on open land. The work changes out there. Something in us tells the truth more easily when we are walking, when there is weather, when we are not sitting opposite a stranger under a lightbulb.
I also work creatively and through the body, often with poetry and voice. Not for effect. Grief and change usually arrive before language does, and these are ways of getting underneath the words we have worn smooth.
How it works in practice
We can meet face to face in Wiltshire, online from anywhere in the UK, or move between the two.
I will be honest: there is no substitute for doing this work in the physical presence of another person.
Sessions are 60 minutes and cost £80, whether we meet indoors, outdoors or online. We work weekly to begin with.
Starting
Before anything begins, we talk. I offer a free conversation of around twenty minutes, by phone or video, with no obligation either way. Tell me what is going on. Ask me whatever you need to. We can both find out whether I am the right person for this.
Making contact is no small thing and I do not underestimate it. When you are ready, message me through this page or call 07550020915. I answer every enquiry myself, usually within 24 hours.
Richard
Training, qualifications & experience
- Constellations Coach; Coaching Constellations and Stephan Hausner
- Leadership and Executive Coaching; ANLP and Professional Guild Trainer
- Psychosynthesis Counsellor; The Psychosynthesis Trust
- Cognitive Hypnotherapy; Anglo European College of Therapeutic Hypnosis
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy; Mindfulness Training Ltd
- Apprenticeship for Grief Training; Francis Weller
I've volunteered my time as a counsellor with the following charities; YMCA, The Olive Branch Chippenham and The Willow Tree Foundation.
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
Therapies offered
Photos & videos
Fees
£80.00 per session
Concessions offered for
Additional information
I hold a few lower cost spaces. These tend to go quickly but please email me to check for availability.
When I work
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Further information
Creativity is at the heart of this work. A 2019 World Health Organization review drew together over 3,000 studies on the role of the arts in health and wellbeing. For me, working creatively is not an extra added to therapy; it is the work we do together. Sometimes playful, sometimes uncomfortable, always illuminating.
I also lead weekly online Group Poetic Medicine Circle. Please email me to enquire about these.
