I am a member
You can't change and yet remain the same, though this is what most
people want.
- Patrick Macdonald
of the British Association for Counselling and
Psychotherapy and
am a graduate of the psychotherapy training
programme at
Spectrum which is accredited by the United Kingdom
Council for Psychotherapy. This was a 9 year training with a
strongly experiential orientation, incorporating gestalt,
psychodrama, psychosynthesis, encounter, transactional
analysis and other approaches. I remain in postgraduate
training and supervision.
I had a previous career as a conveyancing solicitor, and
I am a trustee of the leading lesbian and gay counselling
organization PACE.
I sing the body electric. I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself -
I am large, I contain multitudes.
- Walt Whitman
I have counselled in the voluntary sector
in organizations dealing with domestic violence, childhood bullying
and victims of crime.
Therapy for me is a space in which to have a new experience of
myself, to become empowered and emancipated, to have more of what
I desire and a greater sense of control in my life, to trust myself,
to function better in relationships and in society, and to take
responsibility for my own formative process.
Our society places great demands on us, heightening a sense of
frustration and an unhealthy level of stress. We are encouraged
to rush around in an over-adrenalised state, seeking achievement
and domination, as if we are masters of the world rather than just
a part of it that happens to have something we call 'awareness'.
Two things make God laugh: when a healer says "I healed them!"
or when bickering lovers say "We have nothing in common!"
- Ramakrishna
Overstimulation and overwhelm have a direct effect on our immune,
nervous and hormonal systems. Over time, they lead to depression,
anxiety, a feeling of helplessness, retreat into isolation. This
is the organism regulating itself. My aim, and my wish for the
people I work with, is that we develop our skills of voluntary
self-management, growing a relationship with our own boundaries that
will give us more of ourselves, more of an internalised life, and
greater influence over our experience.
We cannot control our lives or the world or each other, or only to
a limited extent. Life is about meeting the unknown. Our task is
to develop skills of self-regulation, to learn to manage our
boundaries, to become sensitive to our own adaptability and aware
of how our adaptations no longer serve us well, and to accept
ourselves for who we have been and are today and allow ourselves to
dream of what we can yet be.
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