I trained in London and in California and have a Masters in Integrated Counselling & Psychotherapy. I am accredited by the body which demands the most exacting standards and training requirements in the UK, the UKCP. I am a registered member of the BACP which means that my work is overseen by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care. I abide by the Codes of Ethics of the UKCP and BACP.
My background is in documentary filmmaking. I enjoyed making passionate, campaigning programmes for Channel 4, the BBC and ITV for fifteen years.
However, I began to tire of what I came to see as the ‘Circus in Town’ qualities of documentary-making. Film production impacts often very vulnerable people’s lives, and I didn’t like moving from one intense project to the next with only names on my Christmas card list to show for the highly charged and intimate relationships that had been built. What really interested me was people and their psychological and emotional health. I learned that a willingness to talk in front of a camera was often an expression of a desire to be seen and heard in general, to be taken seriously, to have unique sensitivities, perspectives and concerns acknowledged.
This is why I left television and undertook an in-depth training to become a psychotherapist. Communication is as powerful and intense, but the domain is private. We have time to be solution-focused and the beneficiaries are each individual client, their loved ones and their wider circle rather than a television audience. Changing career was a happy decision for me.
I now enjoy teaching counselling skills in the UK and abroad, and am committed to ongoing professional development. An active interest of mine is in making counselling and psychotherapy trainings accessible to people from all backgrounds. It is important to me that people can find therapists who reflect their socio-economic, cultural, ethnic, gender and sexual identity.