Help for the Helpers

I have worked with practitioners from psychotherapy and other allied helping professions in different capacities offering personal therapy, supervision, facilitation and teaching with groups.

I have worked with psychotherapists, forensic, clinical and educational psychologists, SENCO’s, support workers and teachers.

Personal Therapy

Like many psychotherapists I make use of personal therapy, particularly when life gets challenging or I find myself back in a difficult places and have supported other practitioners in a similar way.

However its not easy sometimes to seek support in this way.  We can be expected not to need it as we are the ones supporting people! 

Some flavours of psychotherapy and psychology are taught that personal therapy is not required as part of training and can be a source of shame when life throws some big challenges or life just does not work out as planned.

I offer a non-judgemental, caring, relational approach which I find has been really helpful with the professionals I have supported.  You already have a tremendous amount of knowledge and skills and often it is a matter of re-connecting with that.

Supervision

I prioritise our relationship as the most important aspect of our supervision together and offer a highly ethically orientated safe place to develop your practise and professional identity. 

Working together I could provide some conversations to support you to develop your own professional identity in-line with your values and preferred identity as a person and a practitioner.  I provide a high quality level of relating which structures safety for us to explore this complex world, wrangle over ethics and figure out what you might need to enjoy your work even more!

I am a white, heterosexual, cisgender man originally from Hampshire/Surrey but have lived in Nottingham for 20 years.  I would very much welcome people with diverse identities.  I can also offer remote working if meeting in person is not possible or favoured.

Below I have listed some of the knowledge and skills that I have been working on since I qualified in 2017.  

  • Qualified in 2017 with Msc in Person-Centred Psychotherapy from SPTI and work in private practise in Nottingham.
  • Work as a group facilitator running personal development groups for trainee forensic psychologists and work as a tutor on the Person-Centred MSc course with the Sherwood Institute. 
  • Trained in Person-Centred supervision in Norwich with Cathy Burton and Tonia Mihill
  • I have also trained in Narrative Therapy and integrate ideas from this modality into my Person-Centred practise including my supervision practise.

A few words about Narrative therapy if you’re not familiar….

Narrative Therapy is based on the ideas of Michael White, an Australian social worker, and is grounded in feminist theory and social constructionism.  It is a systemic approach which is used extensively in family therapy.  Like Carl Rogers, Michael rejected the pathologising of distress but has a different way of considering therapy with an even greater emphasis on the dynamics of power within relationships and how these are informed by dominant discourses within society and its impact on people’s lives.  NT inquires about people’s values to discover alternatives to ‘problem’ narratives that may have previously been neglected or overlooked.  The therapeutic work is then used to give more space to these emerging accounts and to bear witness to the practice of these ‘preferred’ identities and values.

If this sounds of interest please drop me a line and we could have a chat to see whether we might be able to work together.  I Look forward to hearing from you.

Group Facilitation

I have been interested in group work since I started my training in 2010 and am a member of several practitioner groups and a men’s group.  I work as a group facilitator at Nottingham University and the Sherwood Institute in Nottingham.  Maybe you are an organisation wanting to set up staff reflective practise teams or you want support developing your group facilitation practise please get in touch.  I would be interested to hear from fellow practitioners even if it were just to network!

Community

I am interested in developing community work.  My hope is to set up community groups to provide space for regular folks to talk about issues that matter to them.  We live in such an individualistic society that for many this results in mental health problems, social isolation and unhappiness.  It also seems to mean that for many they do not now the benefits of the support and care of a community group.  If this sounds of interest please drop me a line.