My original passion since childhood has been art and drawing, and the close, mindful attention to and absorption in what we perceive and how we perceive it. Drawing requires a rigorous yet calm and reflective engagement with what is in front of us and how we perceive and relate to it.

 

I studied philosophy and psychology at Oxford University. I found philosophy most engaging, particularly when it grappled with trying to describe subjective experience, what it is like to be human (the 'continental' philosophers particularly; Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty) and how we might best live. Psychology, it seemed to me at the time, was more concerned with external behaviour and measurement and so at risk of objectifying people. I also loved how philosophy required close, curious attention to experience and the attempt to suspend judgment and prejudice. This fascinated me, reminded me of what I valued in drawing, and influenced me towards Counselling Psychology.

 

Counselling Psychology training was gratifyingly grounded in the philosophical approach ('phenomenology', to give it it's proper name) I had been attracted to at university. Training immersed me in clinical experience in a range of settings (GP surgeries, voluntary sector counselling services, bereavement and a hospital psychotherapy service) and, importantly, my own therapy and experiential groups. Alongside this training I worked in the Henderson Hospital Democratic Therapeutic Community; an internationally recognised centre of excellence providing residential psychotherapy. What I learned there from the residents and staff I have carried throughout my career. They taught me to always look to an individual's strengths, to empower and to take time to be with people in a human relationship, rather than adopting an 'expert' position from which advice and wisdom can be dispensed. They showed me the power of providing a safe relational environment within which individuals, who have struggled elsewhere, can flourish.

 

These values have underpinned my development through my subsequent career, including recently researching how to promote the involvement of people with experience of mental health struggles in the provision and development of mental health services (research paper). I love working in the NHS for the opportunities, challenges and variety of experience it has given me and for the chance to learn from skilled and experienced colleagues. I am, however, wary of the overarching medical/diagnostic model which sometimes dominates, as this can place too much power in the hands of professionals and position patients as passive and 'ill' or even 'damaged'. Therapy must, in my view, take a different approach. It must not reduce people to their problems, but attend to them as a whole person. It should start from the assumption that the difficulties that bring people to therapy were originally solutions to a problem: ways of coping with distress, of getting needs met from others who would not, or could not respond. They have been ways to survive psychologically.

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I have been described by colleagues as calm, reflective, thoughtful and thought-through, measured, empathetic and as having a thorough knowledge and experience of therapy and therpeutic approaches. 

 

I bring these values, developed and ingrained through my training and experience, to my practice - close, curious, non-judgmental attention to really understand your perspective. The provision of a human-human relationship which has the aim of providing enough safety to speak openly and explore your experience. I want to empower you and encourage your active engagement in developing understanding and trying out new strategies and ways of being. As a supervisor of mine put it: 'I don't have the map of this terrain, you have that. I am, however, good at reading maps.'