Approach

My training and approach is 'integrative', meaning that I don't rely solely on a single approach to counselling, psychotherapy or coaching. Instead, I tailor my work to each individual and draw upon a variety of approaches that have been shown to help. Some of this might be quite immediately practical, for instance, looking at how particular situations are being handled and what alternatives might worth exploring. Alongside this, the work may be focused upon the person's own story, how they make sense of this and how this might be affecting their way of living.

Research over the past thirty years or so suggests that, on the whole, the effectiveness of psychotherapy is related to the quality of the working relationship between the client and the therapist, irrespective of the therapist's theoretical approach. Many counsellors and therapists have therefore decided to place the quality of the relationship and their ability to respond to the individual needs of their clients at the centre of their work. This applies just as much to online psychotherapy and web counselling as it does to face-to-face work.

This doesn't mean though that theory and training are unimportant, just that they are only useful in so far as they help the work that goes on between counsellor and client.

In terms of my theoretical approach to therapy and coaching, my training combined a study of both the humanistic and psychodynamic traditions in counselling. The area of psychodynamics known as 'Attachment Theory' and the humanistic approaches called Gestalt and Person-Centred have been formative for me. These approaches look at patterns of relating and how we manage contact with others and how we deal with our own thoughts and feelings. If you want to know more about these approaches you could look at the helpful factsheets and guides offered online by Mind. Mind's Making Sense of Counselling is a good starting point.

Following completion of my professional qualification, I continued with further professional development in London, including, among other things, CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and Narrative Therapy. My Master's thesis examined different approaches to mental health and was published as a series in Self & Society - International Journal for Humanistic Psychology