I am a qualified person centred counsellor and a registered member (083879) of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). My specialisms are: bereavement and loss; cancer counselling; counselling for trauma or loss during pregnancy or birth; spiritual emergence. Mindfulness is a useful tool for helping clients to be present and in the moment. We tend to either live in the past or project onto the future and if we are to bring about any change, we need to start with the now. Additionally and upon request I can include Psychological Astrology in sessions. ‘Astrotherapy’ is a transpersonal based therapy working with myths, symbolism, archetypes, astrology, psychology and the client’s natal chart.
I am based near Halesworth in North Suffolk, East Anglia offering short or longer term counselling, either face to face, telephone or via Skype. Please contact me via my contact form to set up an appointment or for any questions you may have.
I work as a full time counsellor for: the Big C cancer charity (at the James Paget Hospital, Gorleston); Petals charity (Pregnancy Expectations and Trauma and Loss Society, at Ipswich Hospital) and in private practice. Previously I worked in the Defence and Aerospace industry for 15 years, including a period of commissioned service with the Royal Air Force. I understand the pressures of working in fast paced, demanding environments, whilst striving to maintain a work-life balance constantly juggling various commitments and responsibilities.
How did I get here? I was unfulfilled and searching for something. I’d lost my creativity, passion, imagination and spirituality consequently I led a sterile, institutionalised and robotic existence basically going through life on auto-pilot, frustrated and very bored. I enrolled on a course and what started out to be self development evolved into therapeutic counselling training. After years of commitment, hard work, facing and embracing my fears, I ‘woke up’ feeling alive, empowered and in control of my own life. Through creative exploration, meditation and the application of mindfulness ’something’ was re-awoken and now I live life rather than simply exist!
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder, “Never lose the ability to wonder”.
I was drawn to the work of Carl Rogers’ Person Centred counselling. I find this to be a liberating approach which allowed me to discover who I really am instead of living this ideal persona created over the years to seek the approval of my parents, teachers, peers, friends, work colleagues and society. Whilst predominantly person centred trained, my studies included spirituality and transpersonal accredited modules, and such beliefs are crucial and meaningful to both my own existence and how I work.
This we know. The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like blood which unites one family. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. By Chief Seattle (19th Century)
I can support clients’ spiritual emergence, a term first coined by Stan and Christina Grof, an ‘experience’ which is still widely misunderstood in our Western culture and misdiagnosed by the medical world. It is my belief that some depressive bouts are in fact crises of transformation. Grof describes a spiritual emergency:
‘There exist spontaneous non-ordinary states of consciousness, (NOSC) that would in the West be seen and treated as psychosis, and treated mostly by suppressive medication. But if we use the observations from the study of non-ordinary states, and also from other spiritual traditions, they should really be treated as crises of transformation, or crises of spiritual opening. Something that should really be supported rather than suppressed. If properly understood and properly supported, they are actually conducive to healing and transformation’.
