About Me
I am based in Carluke, South Lanarkshire, but also meet with clients in Glasgow and Edinburgh. As well as one to one counselling services, I facilitate workshops and group therapy. Individuals and corporate groups can be catered for.
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My approach to working with clients is based on the principals of care, compassion, and confidentiality. Using an integrative approach in counselling and psychotherapy means adapting how we work to the needs of each individual, drawing on up to date best practice from a range of empirically verified therapeutic approaches.
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I became a psychotherapist after a 20 year career in the nail and beauty industry where I spent tens of thousands of hours working one to one with individual clients, teaching classes, and as a teacher trainer both at home and abroad.
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Who can attend?
Many of us go through difficult times and it can be hard to know what to do for the best. I work with anyone who feels they need support. Everyone is welcome to attend, whether they have or have not seen a therapist before. Some clients may already have been to visit their GP, or have a diagnoses of some kind, but often, those who attend have never spoken to anyone regarding their difficulties until now.
Some common problems that bring people to therapy are listed below, but many who attend start out not knowing exactly what it is that's wrong. If you find yourself in that position, you are definitely not alone, and very much welcome too.
Anxiety & Panic
Depression &
Low Mood
OCD & Phobias
CBT is one of the most effective treatments for anxiety. The process of worry, and what happens in the brain and body during the activity of worry, can be frightening to experience. Feelings of escalating panic are no joke. CBT provides highly effective short term treatment for anxiety with the aim of instilling tools and techniques that can be used for the rest of life.
The struggle with depression or persistent low mood can be an ordeal to endure. Seeking assistance through talking therapy can support you to find the right combination of tools to get unstuck. Therapy works well in combination with medication, or as a potential alternative.
CBT remains the treatment of choice for both OCD and specific phobias by the NHS here in the UK. A rigorous body of evidence exists for the effectiveness of CBT as a treatment in both cases.
You can attend for therapy whether you have a diagnoses, or are self-referring.
Stress Managment
If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by stress, you are by no means alone. Work, family and other responsibilities can become impossible to manage when our systems are overburdened. In therapy we can learn strategies and techniques to manage stress and take control of our lives. Prolonged, excessive stress is known to cause or exacerbate a long list of health complaints. Combating stress with a combination of CBT and techniques from mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) provides us with a suite of skills and the opportunity to build inner resources, improving our ability to cope, heal and live with peace of mind.
Relationships & Communication
For most people, challenges in close relationships with family, friends or colleagues can lead to turmoil and personal suffering. Often, we are not taught how to communicate effectively, and find ourselves stuck in a cycle of emotional outbursts, not being able to say what we mean, or just simply shutting down when facing interpersonal conflict. Assertive communication is a skill that can be learned in therapy allowing us to improve difficult relationships, and make ourselves heard with clarity and confidence.
Trauma & PTSD
Self Esteem & Self Confidence
For many of us, the experiences of growing up, or life as an adult, have taught us that we are not ok. Feelings of not being good enough, of personal deficiency, or of self-loathing can undermine everything we try to achieve. Low self esteem manifests in how we take care of ourselves, how we treat ourselves during challenging times, and how we allow ourselves to be treated by others. Compassion focussed therapy (CFT) in particular, can allow us to unpack these well established habits, and cultivate an effective antidote to the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that have kept us stuck.
Traumatic events, and the many effects they have on the body and mind, is an area of research that has undergone huge advancement in recent years. What constitutes trauma can be a devastating one-off occurrence, multiple events that took place during a particular period of life, or a series of separate experiences culminating over a lifetime. The effects of trauma are experienced differently by each one of us. Two people can experiance the same event and have completely different outcomes in terms of the lasting impact on their minds and bodies. Working with trauma is likely to be painful and difficult, but many of us find that once that work has been engaged with, the whole of life becomes more manageable. Finding the right therapist for you is the place to start. If you would like to book one session to see if my approach could be right for you, please get in touch using the contact form below. Click here for more information on how CBT is used when working with trauma and PTSD.