Cinnabar moth caterpillars feeding on ragwort – a recent photograph which I took that doesn’t do justice to the incredible vibrancy of colour of these dedicated feeders eating with such energy and purpose on the flowers of their native food plant!
I am very committed to personal therapy as truly life-affirming. This commitment is reflected in my training and work experience. Here, briefly, is some of my background:
Training
1997-1999, I did an Advanced Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy at Tower Hamlets College of Further Education. I trained alongside local people who were from many walks of life. Together, we learnt the core conditions of the person-centred approach – empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence. These core conditions provide a solid basis for building relationship in the therapy room. More than that, though, the course gave me so many opportunities to learn with people whose experience was so different from my own. It was truly life changing and I feel such gratitude for having trained alongside the people in that group.
Between 2000 and 2002, I completed a Diploma in Post-Traumatic Stress Counselling. Over the years, I have built on this training through belonging to trauma-informed services in the NHS. I continue to learn effective ways to work with trauma and to apply interventions that can assist people who have severe, unresolved trauma.
From 2002 until 2008, I undertook Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training. This substantial training equips me to work with unconscious process and dream life. I also gained greater attachment security through attending personal therapy at higher frequency.
Work experience
I began working as a therapist in 1998. I’ve worked in the NHS for the past 25 years, finally ending this work in April 2025. During the last 10 years, I was working on a prison PIPE, actively building community with prison officers, prisoners and clinical psychology colleagues. Increasingly, I became involved in a Farms and Gardens area seeing it as a response to the deadening effects of long-term imprisonment on feelings, sensing and thinking. As I became more engaged at developing interventions to address sensory, relational and emotional deprivation so I have become more receptive to the incredible sensory appeal of so much in the natural world. I am sure the everyday images won’t always connect but the intention is simply to highlight just how appealing nature can be to our senses.
For 12 years (2002-2014), I also worked on a housing estate in Newham and helped to form a charity that was about building networks of emotional support. We saw how so many people could feel isolated and alone with their difficulties. We wanted to foster more of a choice, do you have to walk the hard road on your own? Might you walk the road with others alongside you? Eventually, the charity ran out of options and had to close but this understanding that neighbourhood and community are vital to our health and wellbeing continues to engage my thinking. I look for imaginative ways to stay in step with the movement and rhythms of the natural world and for building connections that strengthen community.
I will make space on this website for ongoing thoughts and reflections that have grown out of my work in the forensic context and which affirm my engagement with themes from the natural world. Through these reflections, I hope to make wider connections – and I welcome responses.
Nowadays, my primary focus is on personal therapy from my consulting room in Highams Park. I have been working from this location since 2006 and anticipate continuing to do so for many more years ahead.