About Me
My Story
Why I became a psychotherapist
It’s a long story and probably goes back to my earliest memory…
When I was a child, I was a keen people watcher. I wanted to understand people, what they thought, how they functioned and why they made the choices they made. In particular, I was curious about families and the relationships between people within them. I wondered why children from the same family turned out so differently.
I also noticed the vast differences between how people coped with adversity. It was a mystery to me that some could overcome terrible trauma and loss and go on to live fulfilling lives, while others seemed stuck in the past, unable to move on and were destined to a lifetime of suffering.
As often with long stories, many things happened in my life - I grew up and started to work. I worked in education, in publishing and in the charity sector.
I taught children and adults to read and to appreciate literature. I helped people pass exams. I worked with refugees, asylum seekers and adults who had missed out on their education. I helped students find the tools they needed to enter the workforce.
Sometimes I was commissioned by individuals and organisations to assist them to take their stories to a wider audience. I listened to people tell me their life stories, did research and turned these collaborations into books. I worked on educational films and wrote scripts for animations. Although I loved much about my work, my early sense of curiosity never left me and I always sought to understand more.
After my children grew up and left home, I had more time to reflect and, with the blessing of grandchildren, I gained new and deeper perspectives.
With time, I had the opportunity to focus more purposefully and so I returned to my original and abiding preoccupation - my deep interest in the need to understand people more fully - and so I began to study psychotherapy.
I read widely and looked at different modalities and eventually, I discovered Human Givens Psychotherapy. It brought together so much of my understanding and resonated with so many of my beliefs.
You can discover more about Human Givens Psychotherapy here.