About me
Becoming a therapist wasn’t really a decision I made. It was something that evolved.
There wasn’t a grand plan to become a therapist. But looking back, there were probably a few clues.
Before training as a therapist, I worked in advocacy within the care system. My role was to help children and young people have their views and experiences heard and taken seriously.
It taught me a lot about what it really means to listen to someone. Sounds simple, but it wasn’t always. I could often empathise with the adults and professionals around a young person too — people with pressures of their own, working within systems that sometimes got in the way of what they’d come into the job to do.
But advocacy taught me that understanding everyone’s perspective didn’t mean giving every perspective equal space in that moment. My role was to listen closely to the young person in front of me and make sure their voice didn’t get lost among the adults making decisions about their life.
I saw how much of a difference it could make when a young person felt properly heard.
They could feel less alone, more empowered and more able to have a say in what was happening in their life. I think that’s probably where becoming a therapist started for me.
Around the same time, I was starting to make sense of some of my own stuff too. I had someone in my life who really listened to me, helped me understand myself and my experiences better.
So, in 2020, I started training as a therapist. It felt like a natural next step. I wanted to get better at the things that had already become really important to me: listening properly, taking people’s experiences seriously and being willing to have conversations that aren’t always easy.
The work that’s shaped my practice
Since qualifying, I’ve worked in private practice, hospice care and short-term Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) counselling. I’ve sat with people through loss, relationships that have become difficult, big changes, uncertainty and times when everything has just felt like a bit too much.
Working in hospice care made me look at things a bit differently. Being alongside people facing the loss of someone they loved brought me closer to things most of us would probably rather not think about and reminded me just how much the people in our lives can mean to us.
It made me think more about what really matters, who we want around us and what we want to do with the time we have. I’m interested in the difficult stuff, but I’m also interested in what matters to you, who matters to you and how you want to live your life.
What matters to me
Ultimately, I always come back to where I started: the relationship. I learned pretty early on that if I was going to be any use as an advocate, a young person first needed to feel able to tell me what they actually thought, rather than what they thought they were supposed to say.
And before they could do that, they needed to get a proper read of me. Was I really listening? Did I actually take them seriously? Was I genuinely on their side? (Turns out, young people are exceptionally good at spotting when an adult isn’t being genuine). I think we all do some version of this.
If you’re coming to therapy, you’ll be getting a read of me too. Are you really listening? Do you get me? Can you handle the things I’m about to tell you? And you get to decide what you make of me.
Theories and techniques have their place. But what matters to me is that you feel I get you and that you don’t have to edit yourself in the room.
A place for you as you are
I work with people from different cultures, ethnicities, faiths and social backgrounds and across different sexualities and gender identities.
I also work with neurodivergent people, including people who are autistic, have ADHD or are beginning to understand their neurodivergence later in life.
Your relationships and the way you choose to live might not fit neatly into conventional categories and you don’t need to edit or explain away parts of yourself to belong in the room.
Where our experiences are different, I won’t assume I understand. I’ll be interested in what your experience means to you.
Training & Qualifications
MA (Hons) Psychology — University of St Andrews
Diploma in Relational Counselling — The Spark Scotland
COSCA Certificate in Counselling Skills — Glasgow Cognitive Therapy Centre
Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT) Level 1, 2 and 3 training - University of Strathclyde
Rewind Technique training
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST)
Accredited Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)