Finder

Specialises in

• Behavioural Couples Therapy

• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)

• Trauma focused CBT

Offers

• Face-to-face consultations
• Video and telephone consultations

About me

I am an Accredited Psychotherapist and Clinical Supervisor in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) with the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP), the lead organisation for CBT in the UK - with extensive clinical experience in the UK and USA.

I worked for more than 30 years within the National Health Service (NHS) within a wide variety of services - primary care, mental health, alcohol misuse, addictions, forensic psychotherapy and physical & sexual health - both as a clinician and supervisor.

I worked as a Forensic Psychotherapist with the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (part of King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre), providing psychological therapy and specialist consultation in CBT for individuals with a wide range of complex mental health and emotional, behavioural difficulties including trauma, anxiety, depression, OCD, phobias, addictions, anger, abuse and personal, social and sexual relationship difficulties.

This experience has made me an extremely informed, clinically-experienced practitioner and I have a reputation for compassion and an emphasis on the practicalities of offering help rather than just the theory of the client-based work and I have extensive skill and ability which provides the knowledge experience to offer safe and structured treatment options. I am also appointed to the Judiciary as a Justice of the Peace (JP) for England and Wales sitting in Cardiff Criminal Court helping to protect, enhance and transform people’s lives.

I provide CBT psychotherapy and counselling nationally/internationally via Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp/FaceTime for individuals and couples.

CBT’s approach to psychotherapy is:

Active - you will be involved in practical work during and outside the sessions to check some of your beliefs or new behaviours

Goal Orientated - you set your goals in the first sessions and we will regularly review them throughout the course of your therapy

Setting specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-framed (SMART) goals

Time-limited - Collaborative - you and your therapist work together side by side - your experience, input and feedback being equally important

Evidence based - CBT is a scientifically-evaluated therapy approach and for a wide variety of conditions it has proven to be more/equally effective as other forms of psychotherapy

It is guided by a shared understanding of the problems and helps you to develop and test out your individual set of tools which allow you to deal with and transform unhelpful thoughts and feelings.

How does CBT work?
CBT looks at the connections between thinking (cognitions), feelings (emotions), bodily sensations (physiology) and actions (behaviours). If these interact and form unhelpful feedback loops, one can get trapped in negative emotional states. This can lead to people feeling excessively anxious, depressed, angry and/or developing unhelpful behaviours.

In CBT, the client and therapist work together and develop a shared understanding of the current difficulties, their original cause and in particular what keeps them in place now.

This is often put down on paper as a drawing or diagram (formulation) which guides the work of the following session and introduces a variety of specific techniques or tools to address unhelpful thinking and less successful behaviours.

My approach involves guiding you in how to use these tools in the session and, most importantly, in your day-to-day life. This practical work will often result in a more precise understanding and give you some effective tools to tackle difficulties.

Towards the end of treatment, you will know a variety of techniques which work well for you. Finally, we will make a plan of when and how to use them should you be faced with similar difficulties in the future (relapse prevention).

Areas of interest

Anxiety; Panic Disorders; Depression; Trauma-related Stress; Phobias; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD); Addictions; Problem Alcohol Misuse; Irritability/Anger Problems; Abuse Issues; Sexual Difficulties; Personal Relationship Difficulties; Social Relationship Difficulties; Emotional Difficulties; Couple Therapy; Behavioural Difficulties

Specialist interests and expertise in the following physical conditions

• Cardiac conditions
• Gastrointestinal disorders

• Musculoskeletal conditions
• Pain management

• Psychophysiological disorders
• Physical disability