About Me

Background

When you’re looking for a therapist, it can help to know something about their background and how they came to do the work they do, so I hope you find a little of my own story interesting.
 

Like many therapists, I had a completely different career before becoming a psychotherapist.
 

For almost twenty years, I worked in advertising, eventually becoming an Account Director and working with some well-known brands. My role involved taking a client’s marketing brief, developing a strategy and then overseeing the whole process through to the finished campaign. It was fast-paced, creative work and, although it may seem a long way from psychotherapy, I learned a great deal about people along the way.
 

In the early 1990s, everything changed when I developed M.E., or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I became seriously unwell and eventually left advertising, with no real idea what I was going to do next.
 

Despite being ill, I trained in bodywork, including Therapeutic Massage, Clinical Aromatherapy, Indian Head Massage and Reflexology, all of which I loved. These approaches helped to some extent, but I remained very unwell. I was in my thirties and often felt twice my age.
 

Eventually, setting aside my previous attitude of bewilderment — if not outright contempt — towards counselling and psychotherapy, I decided to see a psychotherapist.
 

That first session changed something for me.
 

After fifty minutes with my therapist, I left feeling both physically and mentally reinvigorated. More importantly, for the first time I had begun to understand why this illness might have me in its grip.
 

Over the next two years, with psychotherapy playing an important part in my recovery, I gradually got well again. The experience had such a profound effect on me that I began to think: if psychotherapy could help me this much, perhaps this was something I wanted to learn to do myself.
 

So, in 1993, I began a five-year training at the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education (CCPE) in Little Venice, West London. I graduated in 1998 with a Diploma in Transpersonal Counselling & Psychotherapy, followed by an MA in 2000. I later gained Diplomas in Supervision and Advanced Psychotherapy and trained in Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), an established treatment for trauma.
 

More than thirty years after beginning my training, I still feel very fortunate to be doing work that I love. I now have a busy private practice working with individuals, couples and supervisees, both face-to-face and online.
 

I was also a member of staff at my training college, CCPE, for many years and am now a trustee. Alongside my clinical work, I run workshops for fellow professionals and members of the public on subjects that have interested and inspired me throughout my career.
 

You can find out more in the Workshops section of this website.
 

And, to my great delight, in February 2026 my first book, The Seeds of Change: How Therapists Cultivate Personal Growth, was published by Routledge. It brings together many of the ideas, approaches and experiences that have shaped the way I work as a psychotherapist, and is available from Routledge, Amazon and other booksellers.