My work with clients

In my private practice in the Peak District, I see clients at my home in Silverlands, Buxton. I have also worked for three charitable organisations as a volunteer. At Blythe House day hospice in Chapel-en-le-Frith, I worked as a bereavement counsellor. For the North Derbyshire Alcohol Advice Service, my clients were people with alcohol-related issues or those close to them. At Women's Aid in Chesterfield, I worked with survivors of abuse. I am currently employed part time by St. Luke's Hospice in Sheffield as a bereavement counsellor.

Every client comes with a unique issue and set of experiences. However, I believe that it is useful for you to understand something about the range of problems that psychotherapy can help with. Here is a summary of the ways in which I have helped some of my clients. Please note that all identifying details have been removed or changed, for the sake of confidentiality.

depression

After feeling low for two years and experiencing little relief from anti-depressant medicine, my client sought help. In psychotherapy, he learned that his withdrawal was a way of protecting himself from the fear of being hurt - a defence he'd discovered as a child with an agressive father. When he realised that he didn't need the defence any more, he started to explore new ways of being, and joined a climbing club. With new friends and a new interest, he gradually started to feel more alive and engaged with life and left the depression and the anti-depressants behind.

anxiety

Whenever my client felt that she was getting close to someone, she started to panic and believed that they would either leave her or become ill and die. In psychotherapy she told me that, while she was growing up, her mother had a terminal illness. An older sister had been so concerned that my client would react badly to the bereavement that she tried to stop her from being close to their mum. To recover from the panic attacks, my client needed to grieve for her mum, and express the anger she felt toward her sister (which she did using puppets). My client learned how to tolerate a little anxiety, and keep her feelings relevant to the present, instead of re-living a destructive pattern from her childhood.

trauma

This client was involved in a car accident which caused the death of an entire family. He hated going to sleep, for he dreamed of the accident night after night, and woke up screaming. His body was constantly tense, and any reminder of the accident would cause him to "switch off". He felt helpless and unable to move forward, spending all his time watching disaster movies and playing computer games. In psychotherapy, this client responded well to learning how to "ground" himself, using meditation techniques and focusing on the affects of the trauma on his body. It also helped him to construct a story of the day of the accident, giving the experience a sense of reality and closure.

stress

This client came to psychotherapy because she had stopped wanting to go to work, finding it too stressful. When we explored what was stressful for her, she realised that it was relationship issues with her colleagues, who never accepted her ideas. Since this feeling of being rejected felt familiar to her, we looked at how rejection had come up for her as a child. It became clear that her colleagues were reminding her of critical foster parents. While she was learning to respond differently to her colleagues, we did some relaxation and breathing exercises which helped her to manage the stress.

low self esteem

For many of my clients, low self esteem has played an important part in their struggle. One of them was a really high achiever, and yet felt that she was worthless. As she was growing up, her older brother had played a large part in convincing her that she was no good, as a way of feeling better himself. During psychotherapy, my client decided that she was no longer going to let her brother dictate how she felt. She embarked on a journey of discovery, finding out what she liked about herself and setting herself some really positive goals for the future.

grief

I have helped many clients through a difficult bereavement process. One of them was grieving because she had been told (when heavily pregnant) that her mother did not have long to live. She was so horrified that her life stopped. In psychotherapy, she needed to express her feelings of anger, sadness, fear and despair, relating to her anticipated loss. Through this process, she became more aware of her nurturing side, and was more able and prepared to help herself through the difficult time ahead.

relationship issues

One client came to me because of an unmanageable relationship with her sister. She wanted to be close to her sister, but couldn't stand her behaviour. I remember that it was a really important moment in psychotherapy when she realised that she was not able to change her sister's behaviour, but could, instead, respond differently herself. From that point, she felt empowered, content to lower her expectations of what she could get from that particular relationship and focus on more meaningful relationships in her life.

life transition

After twenty seven years in the civil service, this client had worked his way to a high-ranking position. The responsibilities he held in his job fed his self esteem and gave him a framework for living his life that he relied upon. Once retirement loomed on the horizon, he began to panic. He used psychotherapy to help him manage the transition from employment to retirement, to learn new ways of feeling good about himself and to create a new pattern of living.

lack of purpose

One of my clients at the bereavement service had been a full time carer for her sister, who had died after a long illness. At this point, my client felt that she didn't have any reason to carry on living, and lost sight of what life was all about. During our sessions, she went on a journey of self exploration and, in that process, came to a new understanding about the big questions of life and existence. She is now embarking on a new career as a children's writer and storyteller, and has developed a strong sense of who she is and what she wants to do in her life.

eating disorders

Several clients who I have seen about abuse issues have also told me about unhealthy eating patterns that seemed impossible to break, such as alternately dieting and bingeing. On each occasion, it seemed that the underlying emotional problems needed to be addressed before the disordered patterns of eating could be replaced with healthy ones.

alcohol issues

So many people that are in really stressful jobs or life situations turn to alcohol for a way to feel better. Once drinking becomes a matter of routine, it is quite easy to drink more each time and slip into a dependency, and then you find that you are no longer in control of it. This is what happened to one of my clients. She stopped drinking when she was taken to hospital with an alcohol-related illness, and came to me for help to stay off alcohol. In psychotherapy, she realised that she had used alcohol to numb the pain of her father's death. In psychotherapy, she expressed the grief she had held onto and found that she could accept her feelings and think about her father without experiencing the overwhelming pain. She learned healthier ways of soothing herself and now is content just to have an occasional drink of wine with a meal.

unexplained physical ailments

Sometimes if we try to hide from our emotional pain, it can turn to physical pain. One of my clients had terrible pain in her shoulders. She visited her GP many times but there appeared to be no medical explanation. She was starting to depend on strong painkillers in order to get through the day and to get to sleep at night. In psychotherapy, I noticed that she did not show any signs of anger, even when she was talking about situations that caused me to feel angry on her behalf. When this client talked about her childhood, it became clear that she associated anger with agression and violence, which had caused her to decide that she could live without anger. This raised a potential cause for her pain - holding in anger. Over a long period, she used psychotherapy to learn how to recognise angry feelings, accept them and vent them in a safe way. Some way into this work, she started forgetting to take her painkillers and then dropped them altogether as she realised that her pain was gone.

life crisis

I have had one client who fits this category. He came for support through his divorce, his wife having left him for his business partner. He was in his mid-thirties, was losing his business and his marriage, and felt that he had not achieved anything in his life so far that he was proud of. His sense of failure filled the room. Initially, he was so lost he even found it difficult to tell me what outcome he wanted from psychotherapy. He was a charming and interesting man, but he didn't know that about himself, in fact he was his own best critic. We searched for and found an understanding of how he came to be so negative about himself, and the affect that must have had on his marriage. He then set about making changes. It wasn't easy and straightforward, and he had many setbacks, but gradually started to improve his view of himself and put his life back together - piece by piece. I can't say that he now has everything he wants, but at least he knows what he wants, is living happily in the present and looking forward to the future.

abuse

All of my abuse work has been with women who have been abused physically, sexually or emotionally by men, although I do know that men can also be abused by women. Even though an abuser's behaviour can be intolerable, one of the most difficult things to do is to leave or ask for help. This is because of an attachment that forms between the abuser and their victim, sometimes as a result of childhood abuse. I remember that one client, who had been abused by her brothers in childhood, and then again by her first husband, kept returning to a boyfriend who beat her. It was a huge turning point in therapy when she promised herself, in a signed statement, that she would not have any further contact with this man. She kept to her promise. Hers was a difficult journey, but she learned a lot about the methods she used to attract men, and the type of men she was attracted to. She made conscious choices to change her approach to men and find one who could be a kind and caring partner. Shortly befor leaving therapy, she had found someone who looked very promising!