I am a qualified and experienced humanistic counsellor with an Advanced Diploma in Humanistic Counselling (2007). I am an Accredited Member of the BACP and listed on the BACP Register For Counsellors and Psychotherapists (Reg. No 038577). As such I am bound by the BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice.
My original counselling training integrated aspects of three humanistic approaches to counselling :
- Person Centred Therapy – which places special emphasis on an empathic, non judgemental and congruent relationship between counsellor and client.
- Gestalt Therapy – which in addition places emphasis on understanding a person’s here and now experience in life and offers an interactive and creative way of working together to build an understanding of patterns in life and how these can be changed when they are not helpful anymore.
- Transactional Analysis – which offers ways to think about and understand patterns in how we relate to ourselves and others.
Continued Profession Development Training
Over the 18 years I have been working as a counsellor I have enjoyed updating and adding to my training in many ways. Below are some headlines of areas of this training that have a large impact on how I work.
Body psychotherapy
I value working holistically, seeing the body and mind not as two separate systems but as deeply interconnected. So I have taken the opportunity attend trainings from a number of practitioners who have a deep understanding of this way of understanding what it means to be human.
In particular I highly value the Relational Trauma Therapy (RTT) approach, developed by Merete Holm Brantbjerg and Kolbjørn Värdel. This is a very practical and yet deeply impactful approach to working with stress and trauma patterns that so many of us carry in our bodies and minds. I have been integrating aspects of this approach into my work for a number of years. Alongside many other things, it offers simple, gentle and easy to learn movement exercises that help us stay present in the here and now and reduce the emotionally reactive patterns that we have developed in response to difficult circumstances. I have found the RTT approach to working with trauma to be very helpful in building or rebuilding resilience when our nervous systems have become over stressed by life experiences.
Neuroscience
Developments in neuroscience help us think about the interplay between body and mind and the role of our early experiences in setting up the basis for our emotional and relational lives. Both Stephen Porges Polyvagal theory and the growing understanding of how the relational environment in which we grow up in, impacts our ability to regulate our emotions are areas of interest for me.
Attachment theory
This looks at how our earliest relationships shape the patterns we adopt in our adult lives and how these patterns can be modified where they have become unhelpful to us.