The Therapist’s Story

Every therapist has a story; here is some of mine. I tell it so that when you sit in the space with me you will know that I understand your struggles because I have faced my own.

I grew up in a military family and had lived in three different countries by the time I was five moving between UK, Europe and West Africa.  In adulthood I’ve spent time living in Israel, backpacked in China, Russia and Australia, visited the Gulf, the USA and much of Europe.  I currently live in France.

Although I’ve loved travelling as an adult, constantly moving in childhood was something I found difficult.  I was quiet and shy and experienced anxiety as I dealt with a lot of absence, separation and loss.

I survived a near drowning incident age two, lost two potential siblings due to pre-birth trauma and went to eleven schools. My coping strategy was to mask my feelings and reinvent myself each time we moved. I was considered “over sensitive” but as an adult I understand I’m an empath. The child’s burden is my gift now.

I believe that helping and healing is in my genes. My paternal grandfather worked with the Jewish Relief Unit at Bergen Belsen concentration camp at the end of WWII.   This interests me in two ways: the connection between us in our roles as helpers of traumatised individuals; and as trans-generational trauma within the family.

At 19 I was working and living in the Middle East and in my twenties I was married for a while, and then I wasn’t.  At thirty I moved to London where I studied for a degree in History of Art. To fund myself I worked in marketing, but something wasn’t right.   “The black dogs”, as Winston Churchill called them, had escaped their cage. I was in free fall and the masking wasn’t working. And that’s where my healing journey began.

I was feeling exhausted, confused and unfulfilled when in 1998 I met and spent a year studying with spiritual development teacher William Bloom and the Open Mystery School. It was an intense period of personal growth which was also accompanied by ill health, unexplained symptoms, panic attacks and raging anxiety.   I worked with some wonderful practitioners of complementary therapies and I started to read books like Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion and Stanlaf Grof’s Spiritual Emergency. 

And eventually I went into Psychotherapy.

 While working through my own healing and recovery I started training in London as an Integrative Psychotherapist, firstly at the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education (IATE) where I completed my foundation year and then at The Minster Centre where I qualified as an Integrative Psychotherapist.

I have been in service as a therapist and healer every since.

And the modalities I now practice have been amongst those that supported my own healing journey.

For me being a therapist is not just a profession but a life-in-service from which I learn something new every day. I love witnessing peoples stories and I’m good at that.  And a somewhat itinerant life has taught me that while cultural, ethnic and social differences exist, humans across our planet share very ubiquitous traits.

I look forward to hearing your story.