Client Work Experience

I have worked within various London NHS Trust settings across London in counselling positions in primary and secondary care.   I have hundreds of hours of experience working with:

• anxiety (stress, generalised anxiety, social anxiety, panic, performance anxiety etc.)

• depression

• bereavement

• life adjustment issues (infertility, physical changes, cancer diagnosis and coping )

• relationship difficulties (problems with parents, spouse, partner, children etc.)

• psychosis experiences and recovery

• post-traumatic stress  (PTSD) and Complex-PTSD

My experience with developmental and  life adjustment difficulties include:

• bereavement

• self-development and existential exploration

• parenthood adjustments (including fertility difficulties, motherhood adjustment, 'empty nest' etc.)

• workplace transitions (redundancy, transitioning from student into 'career')

• menopause

• mid-life 'crisis'

• understanding and accepting diagnosis (autism, PTSD etc)

• transitioning from military service into civilian life

My counselling and research interests have centred around identity exploration and questioning one's beliefs whilst navigating difficult work and life adjustments.  My doctoral research is on post-traumatic growth following psychosis-like experiences (some also refer to this as 'spiritual emergency' or 'spiritual crisis').

Therapeutic Approaches

One of the things I love about being a counsellor is being able to learn and apply new and different therapy approaches. As everyone is different, it is helpful to learn different therapy approaches as some approaches are better suited to specific difficulties. 

My training has covered Person-centred, Psychodynamic, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and Systemic approaches.  Within these over-arching approaches, I've drawn upon:

Person-Centred:

• Traditional Rogerian Client-led therapy

• Transactional Analysis

• Emotion-Focused Therapy

• Gendlin's felt-sense technique

• NHS' short-term 'Counselling for Depression' therapy approach

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy:

• Unhelpful Beliefs and Cognitive Distortions:  This is often the cornerstone of CBT and involves exploring unhelpful thought patterns that may maintain distress

• Various models, including:  Generalised Anxiety, Intolerance of Uncertainty, Panic, Social Anxiety, Psychosis, anger, sleep hygiene

• Ehlers & Clarke PTSD model 

• inner child work (childhood trauma)

• Behavioural Activation:  usually applied for low-mood and depression

• Acceptance and Commitment therapy

• Mindfulness, visualisations (cognitive rehearsal, imagined reliving etc.)

Systemic:

• Solution-focused therapy

• Internal family systems (AKA 'parts work', which involves exploring different 'aspects' of yourself with potentially conflicting thoughts and behaviours)

I also trained in Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy, which provided the same CBT fundamentals training but with additional interventions.  The training was also the most psychologically-based hypnotherapy training available. It was the only hypnotherapy training approved as Continuous Professional Development by the British Psychological Society. 

Working with Neurodiversity

The Autistic Spectrum runs within my family so I'm very accustomed to some of the common difficulties but appreciate everyone I've known with the condition is unique and impacted differently. 

Attending autism awareness training and working with client with autism has provided great insight into adapting counselling for clients on the spectrum. We can talk about whether you might require sensory, environmental or therapy process adjustments to meet your unique needs.

I also find myself with a larger number of friends and colleagues diagnosed with ADHD so I'm gaining good insight into adapting and tailoring therapy to accommodate these unique needs.