Practice Areas

What we do

Established in 1992 Heart and Mind Are A Busy Family Run Private Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice

We Cater for Individuals, Couples, Families and Corporate Clients. Click on the headings below to find out more

Individual Counselling/Psychotherapy

Couples Therapy

When you come to Heart and Mind for your Initial Consultation as a couple, you will both have the opportunity to share your experience and be heard. Following this appointment you can decide together if you would like to continue with further appointments.

My approach to working with couples is firstly acknowledging just how daunting it can feel to address painful issues that may have been present for some time. My commitment is to hear you both and encourage you to make healthy choices together, whether that be continuing with the healing process, or finding acceptance to navigate a peaceful resolution.

You may be exhausted having become entangled in a ‘negative communication cycle’. An example of a ‘negative communication cycle’ is when couples become entangled in competitions with one another. Such as who has had the least sleep? Who has worked the longest hours? Who has done the most chores? Who initiates sex or intimacy the most? Who has felt more rejected? Who does the most parenting?

With these competitions comes an often well rehearsed narrative that results in both partners feeling unseen, unacknowledged, hurt and frustrated. These cycles may include many different areas of your lives together, some are slow to come around, while others are rapid cycles which become the only form of communicating together.

I will invite you to view and approach your relationship from different angles, starting with exploring the language that we use when we communicate with one another. By bringing more awareness to our language we can come to find a safe middle ground that enables both partners to communicate effectively and experience more love and security.

I will encourage and support you to be present for one another, to suspend your usual narrative and way of listening for a moment, enabling you to hear your partner in a way that has been difficult before. I will invite you to become more familiar with your defences, recognising when and how they show up and the impact they have on your relationship.

Your willingness to brave your own vulnerability and feel supported is at the heart of a healthy intimate relationship.

By fostering goodwill and courage, you can begin to look at the bigger picture, experiencing the relationship as a team, available to be there to support one another and create a brighter, more peaceful future together.

Supervision

I enjoy supervision, both my own supervision and supervising other therapists, students and professionals. As well as attending courses and writing essays, I have gained an immense amount of knowledge and wisdom from supervision.

I value the space that is safe, viable for challenge, supportive, encouraging and fertile for growth.

I look at this from a variety of angles, being aware of the theory of your practice and how your learning impacts your relationships with your clients. I encourage you to approach supervision with a mind of experimentation and a willingness to be vulnerable yourself, reflecting the vulnerability that we support our clients with.

I do not approach supervision from an ‘us and them’ perspective, I prefer an exploration of the mutually arising relationship that forms between the therapist and the client.

I am interested in your experience of your client, including what is present for you outside the therapy room. Do you feel parental towards your client? Do they remind you of your aunt, your mother or your partner? Do you feel your buttons pressed in a way that it’s hard to show up and find compassion for your client in the room? Does your work with a particular client bring up a feeling of being stuck? Do you believe that they are not making the progress that you think they should be? These questions are something I like to explore during supervision taking a 360° approach to the relationship.

I will encourage you to be clear and mindful of your own boundaries and the importance of taking responsibility in creating a safe space for your client.

The presence of robust boundaries are the cornerstone of the therapeutic relationship which hold the whole structure together creating safety for both the client and the therapist.

I invite you to develop your awareness so you can recognise the difference between what is ‘your stuff’ and what is your client’s, making use of supervision to explore this.

The therapeutic relationship is one that is in constant flux, developing and growing, coming together and falling apart, rebuilt with compassion each time in a way that creates change.

I value the importance of feeling safe in supervision, being able to be open about our vulnerabilities, able to say that we don’t know, feel worried about, and able to recognise when something is beyond our professional capacity to manage.

I will guide you in your face-to-face approach with your clients and also in the wider picture of your practice, how you represent yourself and how you would like to develop as a professional.

Neurodiversity

There is more and more awareness in recent years about the nuances of Neurodiversity, more specifically around ADHD and ASD.

I have supported many people over the years with various neurodiversity, including my son’s diagnoses age 6 and my own 10 years ago. This has been a huge learning process for me.

My perspective when approaching these conditions is that a diagnoses is a map which help us navigate your individual neurodiverse world.

I view my role as a translator, or guide, bridging the gap between the Neurodiverse and the Neurotypical. My interest is in the language we use to describe our experience and how we can learn one another’s ‘language’ with this awareness.

I will explore with you your individual needs regarding your neurodiversity, focusing on the things that impact you on a daily basis, many times this is focused on communication, being able to listen and express yourself as things occur.

I will support you in recognising your repeating patterns, the commonalities that reoccur, how together we can figure out a way of navigating these issues so you feel empowered and autonomous.

Together we can explore ‘life hacks’ for Neurodiversity, ways that we can make things easier to manage. I have a very practical, pragmatic way of looking at these challenges. I like to find what works for the individual and how this can be implemented into the embroidery of your life in a way that you can refer back to as a resource. I will encourage you to form new habits and new ways of being with yourself that encourage you to be aware of your feelings, access the ability to slow down and manage them in a way that does not feel so urgent.

I am interested in the origin of your frustration and anger and how this can be addressed at the core, to enable you to have more understanding and patience with yourself. you to implement change in a safe and practical environment with compassion and understanding. I will encourage you to experiment at your own pace with different ways of communicating or being in the world that we can then explore the findings together and see what worked and what didn’t work which parts will be helpful and which parts did not work for you. I will help you to develop a way of being that you can refer to as a consistent guide to doing things the way that work for you and allow you to be there for yourself and also turn up in your relationships in a way that is satisfying for you and the other person.