I understand life can be difficult and today’s pressures can mean we are all operating within busy and challenging social structures.  Perceptions and influences can divert us away from the person we want to be. 

Ultimately, as I say to all my clients, I want you to be able to make the most of your life in the way you want to, not the way others think you should.

My personal experiences inform how I work. My experience of the people who see a counsellor is they take away many positives when we part. 

I understand that opening and being vulnerable is difficult and sometimes scary. I'll do my best to put you at ease and feel supported through the process. Therapy with me is like a conversation that focuses solely on your well-being. I ask a lot of questions to get us started on your road for self-exploration. Together we'll figure out what is working and what's not working in your life. And you get to decide where to go from there. And finally expect to laugh and enjoy our sessions because what I hope for you is a chance to speak to someone who gets you and wants to listen to your story to help you write the next chapter.

Training is important; it stops me getting stuck in a rut and never challenging myself.  As a therapist there are many pathways I could choose to follow however, I am on the pathway that seeks to enhance my counselling with adults who face a variety of issues.

My last training enables me to practice Acceptance Commitment Therapy.  I have found it to be a really effective therapy when supporting my clients. 

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an action-oriented approach in which I work with clients to help them learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with their inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that should not prevent them from moving forward in their lives.

With this understanding, I find many clients begin to accept their hardships and commit to making necessary changes in their behaviour, regardless of what is going on in their lives and how they feel about it.

ACT was developed in the 1980s by a professor at the University of Nevada. The ideas that coalesced into ACT emerged from Hayes’s own experience, particularly his history of panic attacks. Eventually, he vowed that he would no longer run from himself—he would accept himself and his experiences.

ACT is my main therapeutic approach, it helps us stop treating our own lives as problems to be solved as if we can sort through our experiences for the ones we like and throw out the rest and stop regarding emotions as good or bad. 

I have a foundation degree as an integrative counsellor from the University of Ulster.  I have a qualification in single session (one by one) counselling sessions, and I have additional Cognitive Behaviour Therapy training specific to depression, anxiety,and PTSD.  These are the big bits of my training, but I do lots of additional training e.g., Imposter Syndrome, low self-esteem.