Bio

BSc (Hons) Integrative Counselling MBACP - Middlesex University London.

Integrated Services Family Support Practioner

Refugee and Asylum Seeker Counsellor

Positive Parenting Intructor

26 Years Actual parenting practice....most practical learning curve ever!

MIND cousellor

Private Practice.

Social Media Communications Coordinator - DKS Studios.


My Personal Philopsophy -  The Open Box  Explained

I believe everyone has a box they keep their personal 'stuff' in ...by 'stuff' I mean memories, experiences, hopes and dreams.
Some of us bury our boxes...or baggage... deep in the closet in our mind, forgotten and safe. Sometimes it's not so easy to forget and 'stuff' starts spilling out, absorbing our thoughts, robbing us of sleep, affecting our relationships....we feel stressed.

At these times many of us instinctively look for someone to talk to, it's natural, its simply how we're wired...some of us find this easier than others. Sometimes we don't have anyone to talk to.... and some things we simply couldn't tell our friends and family, so we've never spoken about them.

Sometimes others opinions and advise aren't helpful. Indeed, talking to the wrong person can even make us feel worse about ourselves when what we really need is someone who'll just listen to us and understand; not judge us or have an agenda of their own. Someone who'll keep our secrets, and respect our privacy...someone we can trust.

Whatever's on your mind, it's good to open up and talk to someone caring. It might be about childhood experiences, current life challenges, relationships, or future goals you want to reach... Taking a little time to talk things through constructively with someone trained to offer you the support you need, can help you to develop your own emotional resources, enabling you to cope better with whatever you are facing, past, present and future.

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My Style or way of working -  Cozy Corner Counselling

Personally I don't like to think of my kind of therapy as a 'treatment' for some aliment, I'd rather you think of it as a bit of extra support...ie help not a fix. I believe the best kind of support is the kind that helps you to find our own answers. What I bring are tools, skills and ideas that we can use together to help you figure out where you are in whatever situation you're feeling bit lost in. Because of my  training in all the psychotherapeutic models, I have lots of ways we can explore past, present or future issues.
Besides professional tools I use myself as a tool.....I'll explain.....it's all very well someone having lots of learing and academic understanding but they need to know how to connect with people primarily or all that is useless and more of a barrier to healing than anything else.
My personality is very much a part of how I do therapy and shapes the sort of experience people share with me when they spend time with me.

I have always been a bit of a rebel, if there was some way I could do it differently, whatever it was, I had to be different! Maybe is you too? Maybe this is what's attracted you to my site and kept your interest?

My journey has been global and richly challenging and it has shaped who I am without a shadow of doubt. This is me.
As a teenager I dropped out of Art School, ran off to America, got married, had four children, and got divorced. That's a very big chapter spanning 15 years but it suffices to say I learned a great deal about relationships, true friendships, and self sufficiency...both gardening and the soulful kind.

When that phase of my life ended I returned to England with my chidlren, alone, to face the enormous task of single parenting. During this time spanning 13 years, again I gardened....food and flowers, the physical and  the spiritual.

I decided to train in psychotherapy probably to better understand my own journey first and foremost, but I also had a burning passion to do something positive for women especially. Women who had lived lives like mine, had childhoods perhaps like mine, who went on to have similar relationship issues like I did.
I knew there were connections, I wanted to work it out.... and I wanted to be part of a change in the world, so I became a therapist - I studied Integrative counselling and psychotherapy and got my BSc.

I have worked in many different settings, with all sorts of people, living all sorts of lives. Each of us is an individual...although it maybe your symptoms that you are focused on right now, and this maybe your reference for seeking help but I have learned underneath we are all pretty much the same, with the same human needs - relational needs -  http://www.integrativetherapy.com/en/articles.php?id=73
This is the theoretical foundation for my personal therapeutic style.

What I'm like
I know people have preconceptions about counsellors, I do anyway....I see a little picture and I imagine who they are in their little room.  I have been to enough counsellors myself to know there's a sterotype, how they so often dress, and the language they use.... for me it's not very real, if I'm honest sitting in my chair opposite them quite often felt like being in a teachers office, although a kindly one and I would be in my child space, and they would be the all knowing adult, the expert.
Except now I know know they aren't. I know we're all just as muddled as each other, we all have the same issues to deal with, sooner or later.......that's just what life does to us....therapists just have a few more skillls, to help work it all out and the motivation to want to help others.

I believe the old skool presentation of counselling was a barrier to true mutual connection for me and therefore I assume it maybe for others also.
Anyhow I just can't be that, so it really doesn't matter anyway at the end of the day.  Like you I am myself.   I wouldn't expect you to have to change yourself to feel comfortable with me so I try to offer you as relaxed, comfortable and emotionally acessible a place to meet as I can...whether online, or in person.

I don't wear woooly cardigans often, my hair isn't bobbed and grey, and I have one set of precious beads that were my grandmother's, but I don't wear them to work. I wear heels and makeup and I drink coffee and eat cookies.

I've not had a comfortable priviledged middle class life, probably due to my own choices but that's a long story.....my space isn't clutter free and I don't routinely listen to celtic music in the background, although we could if you would like to bring your own.

If impersonal and doctor like is your idea of professional then I'm not going to fit that....I'm chatty, smiley, and personable...that's who I am in all my relationships, ours would be no different.

I hope that the people who come to see me, or connect with me, feel my interest in them personally, I hope they experience the benefits of being cared for because I truly believe it's the relationship that heals our hearts, not our knowledge.

Everything we aspire to work out together will be inorder for you to have a better relationship with yourself and others....it's relationships that screw us up, from the time we are kids, parents and teachers, friends, lovers....etc...and it's relationships that heal us.

These are the conclusions of my lifetimes study into personal dynamics....this is the core of my
practice.