About me :

People’s emotional and psychological wellbeing and mental health issues have always interested me greatly and lead to a desire to work in this field. This interest initially led me to becoming a volunteer with the Samaritans before embarking on a training as a psychodynamic counsellor.

Post-qualification, I and a colleague set up a counselling centre offering on-going therapy to private individuals. We also had the opportunity of offering short-term, time-limited counselling within the local Primary Care Trust. Local businesses and organisations looking to offer counselling to their employees also approached the centre and we were able to tailor various schemes whereby we provided employees short-term counselling under the umbrella of the employer with the opportunity of this being extended by their individual on a private basis where needed.

After some years, I began to feel that whilst what I was then offering was sufficient for some people, others wanted and sometimes needed, to work at a greater depth and analytically. This led me to leave the centre and following a further training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy with the Guild of Psychotherapists, to set up in my own private practice. The training at the Guild is pleuralistic, meaning that most theories and orientations are studied and this allows for a rich diversity of thought and practice and provides the therapists access to varied materials, papers, workshops and seminars.

After undertaking a pleuralistic training most therapists find their own orientations and particular areas of interest, as have I. However, I believe that it is very important, as a psychotherapist, to hold in mind that sometimes we may need to look at other ways of working. As such, although I now practise mostly as an analytic psychotherapist, working with people long-term, sometimes several times a week, I aim to provide the kind of therapy most appropriate to an individual’s needs.

I am a member of the UKCP (UK Council for Psychotherapy) and am bound by their code of ethics.