Sessions might include: 

·       Bringing awareness to the thoughts, feelings and the behaviours that effect your experience of life and your relationship with others.

·       Identifying the stories you tell yourself or your internal self-talk (especially the inner critic) and making links with how this impacts your experience, feelings and behaviour.

·       Noticing coping mechanisms and what they might be protecting or avoiding.

·       Working creatively and to access deeper or unseen parts of yourself. Working with images, creative writing, poetry, metaphors, drawing, dreams, music, and parts work.

·       Working with your body. For example, inviting you to notice what you are experiencing in your body, as well as your thoughts and feelings.

I will always work at a pace that is right for you, with empathy, honesty and integrity.

My qualifications:

I have a PGDip in Humanistic Psychotherapeutic Counselling from the University of Brighton, and I am an accredited member of the BACP. I have a certificate in Creative Supervision.

I also have a BSocSci in Politics and Philosophy, and a MPhil in Development Studies.

My experience:

I have over a decade of experience as a counsellor, and trainer of counsellors. I work in private practice and previously worked for a low-cost counselling charity. I am an Associate Lecturer in counselling and mental health at the Open University, and I teach counselling at the University of Brighton. I am also a counselling supervisor.

Before training to be a counsellor, and I worked as a social science lecturer and researcher at the University of Sussex for 12 years.

I combine my background in the social sciences with my training as a counsellor. Our mental health is not just influenced by our personal experiences, family and relationships, but also by the communities and society in which we live. I adopt a feminist approach to counselling and acknowledge the role power and patriarchy plays in the roles we play and how we feel about ourselves.

My approach:

I am a humanistic counsellor. My approach is based on the idea that we all make our own meaning in life, so your experiences, and the meanings you have given them, will be unique to you - there isn’t an off-the-shelf diagnosis that can solve all your problems. The goal of therapy is to make sense of you and your difficulties and find a way to respond that works for you.

It is also based on the idea that as it is often relationships that hurt us, it is also relationships that can heal us too. Counselling can offer a healing relationship with an honest, empathetic and accepting human.

I have archived some blog posts exploring some of the ideas I use in therapy and reading these will give you a sense of how I work. You can read it here.