I specliase in trauma, addiction and anxiety, combining talking therapy with creative imagination and body work. It all probably started when I was 16 and trained by Jude Hirstwood as a Peer Educator and workshop facilitator for the award winning Luton VI Form AIDS Team. After graduating I moved to Washington D.C. where I had a terrible breakdown but found a wonderful (pastoral, Imago) therapist, Mary Rita Wieners. Back in the UK, General Electric trained me well in workshop facilitation, made easier by getting clean and sober in AA, thanks in no small part to my friend Richard Levy, and I went on to really cut my teeth as a freelance trainer under Matt Drought at Natural Training, and then under the inspired and inspiring Siobhan Stanley at Inside Out Coaching. At the same time, I trained as a helpline volunteer with Saneline, before going on to start my Post Graduate Diploma in Integrative Psychotherapy at the CCPE. I started seeing clients at The Caravan, the drop in centre outside St James' Piccadilly, before moving across to work with the charity FreshStart, under Christa Scholtz, which offers low and no cost long term therapy for people who couldn't otherwise afford it. In 2011 I started seeing clients privately. In 2013 I had a breakdown and was diagnosed with Panic Disorder and then subsequently with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I took a year out from training and two years out from seeing clients. In 2015 I re-started my private practice under the banner of A Time To Heal. I would say I learned the most about being a good therapist from being a painfully struggling client. I'll always see the year as a client with Mary Rita, and the eight years as a client at CCPE with Mary-Clare de Echevarria, as my apprenticeships. If I can one day be half the therapists they were for me, I'll be fulfilled. I think it's important to acknowledge that I do have a personal faith, which I depend on privately for guidance and strength in my work. I started on a faith journey when I was only seven or eight, in secret and in the midst of a non-religous family. I've explored Christianity, New Age spirituality, a Pagan belief system, Buddhism, Sufism, the Hindu Advaita tradition, and back to Christianity by way of the Baptist perspective, and most recently with the Quakers. I don't really believe in one so-called truth. I do believe in One God with whom we can have a deep and personal relationship. Mostly I believe in kindness, in compassion, in love (including tough love), and in a path towards peace that has to start with our relationship with ourselves, moves out to our relationship with the people closest to us and then beyond. I do believe we can all find the courage to change and the time to heal when we have to. I also believe that we are all already enough as we are.
