Over the years, I have also had quite extensive experience in a number of different settings.  Firstly in a secure residential hostel in Greenwich with (so-called) ‘delinquent’ adolescent girls  (for 6 months in 1984-5); in a psychiatric half-way and elderly house residential setting in Brent (for 1 year, 1985-6); then, over one winter, in one of the first “Care in the Community” projects, as a Mental Health Day Centre worker, also in Brent (1986-7); then I settled down as the resident psychotherapist at the Findhorn Foundation, an educational & spiritual community in north-east Scotland; in Morayshire, where I stayed for 17 years.  I also  – separately – took on being a director of a charitable company providing day services for long-term psychiatric patients and people with ongoing mental health issues (for 7 years),  Then, more recently (2003-2023), I was working in a variety of part-time jobs and in locum positions in the NHS, in the Central Belt of Scotland around Edinburgh offering psychotherapy & counselling to primary care referrals in clinics, in doctors’ surgeries, and in departments of Clinical Psychology in 3 different trusts.

     Whilst I originally trained as a body-oriented, humanistic and transpersonal psychotherapist, I have been working much more eclectically and using many concepts and techniques from the field of brief psychotherapy, family systems, cognitive behavioural therapy, as well as some concepts from object relations theory and from psychodynamic and transpersonal psychotherapy; really whatever seems appropriate to the person and conditions.

    I have also been working with people in (fairly extreme) emotional and psychological crisis states. So, accurate diagnosis, evidence-based techniques, measurement indexes, examination of dysfunctional thought processes, and the setting of achievable goals are all fairly critical, as well as utilizing a large range of methods for reducing stress levels and anxieties; both self-induced, social and environmental; keeping proper records; making formulations, and being a solid & informed presence for the person in crisis and the people around them.

    I have supervised other staff members and practitioner s and been in fairly consistent and appropriate therapy and supervision myself.  I have taught courses to psychotherapists in training and to other staff members. Having done a Counselling Supervision course (COSCA – accredited) at Edinburgh University, I have recently started to supervise other counsellors and psychotherapists. And I also line-manage trainee counsellors on placement.