I believe that to fully understand and attend to people we need to consider their cultural, environmental and relational context. I believe we need to attend to all the dimensions of being human – physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual – in a fully integrated and holistic way, as complex as this is.
I also view the quality of the therapeutic relationship as one of the most needed, most potent and most neglected, ingredients of helping and healing.
My two favourite subjects at school were history and sport. This, and the fact that there were no medical influences in my family, means it might seem surprising that I decided to become a doctor. Even more surprising, perhaps, was that I managed to get into medical school.
I began my medical training at Southampton University in 1987, although I took time out on a couple of occasions, working in nursing homes and also spending 6 months working in a home for adults with learning disabilities as a care worker. I therefore qualified in 1994 and then embarked on training in psychiatry at the earliest opportunity.
It seems I was not destined for a conventional career path. After two years of psychiatric training I left my job to do full-time counselling training, gaining a diploma in person-centred counselling from the University of East Anglia in 1998. After this, I returned to psychiatric practice and subsequently worked in a number of NHS jobs in a variety of settings (hospital and community). This included 10 years working in inner city Gloucester followed by 10 years working in Herefordshire. I left the medical profession and psychiatry entirely in 2020 in order to work full time as a therapist.
For some years I also worked as a counsellor within the voluntary sector in Gloucester, combining this with a part-time psychiatry job. Then after leaving psychiatry and the NHS I set up my own independent, private practice as a therapist and a bit later on also as a supervisor.
Other important strands of my professional life over the years have been developing and delivering workshops, drawing on my dual allegiance to psychiatry and counselling / psychotherapy. I have been deeply interested in building bridges of understanding and dialogue between these two fields and their respective ways of understanding human distress. This motivation has also led to various publications, particularly my latest book ‘Psychiatry and Mental Health. A guide for counsellors and psychotherapists’ (PCCS Books; 2020).
As well as a wide variety of professional experience, I also bring to my work as a therapist and supervisor my experience of several periods of having my own therapy. This has been more valuable than anything in giving me an understanding of human woundedness and what it is like to be deeply listened to and understood, and loved.
If I were to describe my approach to life, it includes an interest in the deepest truth and wisdom that unites us. This lies at the heart of most religions and spirituality. This, it seems to me, is increasingly alienated from the modern, Western cultural worldview that is not generally open to mystery and paradox. Therefore, I often have my nose in books on many subjects. I hope these days this is less about gaining knowledge. I am more interested in developing and maintaining an attitude of wonder at how human beings and all life comes into being, survives and grows – simply, what it is that gives life.
Thankfully, my life isn’t all work and seriousness. I have sung in choirs for most of my life and started having piano lessons again in my late 30s. 80s pop music can seriously get me going. I still keenly follow sport and engage in long distance running on and off, although the distances are getting shorter as I get older.
I offer 60 minute one-to-one sessions for adults. I’m based in Gloucestershire and provide sessions face to face and on-line.
I provide regular supervision or one-off consultation, either in person in Gloucester or on-line.
I deliver workshops for counsellors, psychotherapists, mental health professionals and those in allied roles.
