Most counsellors will tell you they were always drawn to this work. I wasn't — not for a long time. Here's a bit of how I got here, what I trained in, and how I think about what we'd do together.
I spent fifteen years working in publishing — first in London, then in Belfast after I moved back. It was a good career and I liked it. I was also, for a long stretch of it, quietly struggling underneath. Like a lot of people, I worked around what I was feeling rather than looking at it directly.
When I was thirty-four I started seeing a counsellor of my own, on the recommendation of a friend who'd done the same. I went weekly for three years. It changed my life — not in any sudden way, but the way most real change happens: slowly, then all at once.
I started training the year I turned forty.
I did my counselling qualification at an accredited counselling institute, completing a four-year integrative counselling diploma. After qualifying I spent two years at a community counselling service in East Belfast, which is where I got the bulk of my early experience. I started taking private clients in 2021.
I'm a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) — registration number 000000 — which means I work within their ethical framework and have committed to ongoing professional development. I have supervision fortnightly with a senior practitioner, which is both required and genuinely useful.
It means that when you talk to me, you're talking to someone who has sat where you might be sitting. Not with your exact situation — that would be a different kind of help — but with the general experience of feeling like you should be coping and not quite knowing how.
It also means I take this seriously. I read, I learn, I keep training. I have my own counselling now to make sure I'm in good shape for the people I work with. This isn't a sideline or a second-career retreat — it's the work I expect to be doing for the rest of my career, and I want to do it well.
Integrative counselling means drawing on a few different therapeutic traditions, choosing the bits that fit you rather than fitting you to a method. Below: what that actually looks like.
The first few sessions are mostly me trying to understand what's going on, in your words. I'm not trying to slot you into a category. I'm trying to see what you see, and notice what you might not be saying.
Counselling isn't open-ended drifting. We agree what you'd like to work towards — even if "I don't know yet" is the answer to start with. The goals can shift as we go.
Person-centred work (the foundation of really listening). CBT (where we want to change unhelpful patterns). Psychodynamic ideas (where the present makes more sense in light of the past). I won't ask you to pick.
I'm not a blank slate. If I notice a pattern, I'll gently bring it up. If something you said struck me, I'll tell you. Therapy works through real human attention, not professional distance.
Counselling registration requires ongoing professional development. These are the recent trainings that have most shaped how I work.
Two-day intensive with Cruse Bereavement Care, focusing on complex grief and grief that doesn't fit the conventional stages.
20-hour foundational training in trauma-informed approaches, including the basics of polyvagal theory and stabilisation work.
A specialist course at a specialist training centre on the particular work of midlife — what's specific to it, and what's universal.
Six-week course in adapting therapeutic work for clients with ADHD and autism — how the conventional therapeutic frame sometimes needs adjusting.
"I don't think therapy is about being fixed. I think it's about being properly seen — by someone who's paid to do it well — for as long as you need." — Niamh