About me
I am a counsellor and psychotherapist. I am also autistic. While my experience of living may
be different to yours, you may find it useful to work with a therapist who has direct
experience of being neurodivergent.
Prior to fulfilling a long-held ambition to train and work as a psychotherapist my professional
background has spanned four decades of working with people in the legal, housing and
mental health fields. I have also worked as a design researcher and an artist
I welcome working with both individuals and couples. As an autistic man I have personal
experience of the benefits a neuroaffirming counselling framework brings to the relationship
with oneself, between partners, and between parents and children.
I have extensive experience of living with neurodivergent family members and am strongly
aware of the emotional, mental health, relational, professional and academic challenges
faced in daily life by parents, grandparents, children, teens, partners and individuals.
My style of work is collaborative, warm and thoughtful. While I may make suggestions,
wonder about perspectives and ask what’s going on, I don’t ‘make’ therapy happen.
Whether I am meeting you as an individual or a couple – together we create a space in which
natural and inevitable processes of healing, understanding and connection can arrive. The work can sometimes flow and at other times be challenging but it’s always at your pace.
Ways of Working
I offer in-person appointments from my home in Todmorden, West Yorkshire as well as online and phone meetings.
Since the accounts we hold of our place in the world go a long way to shaping how we live, my aim is for us to understand the unique patterns of your life. As the stories that inhabit (and perhaps inhibit) you are revisited there is an inevitable loosening up: problems are viewed with a new awareness and symptoms can diminish.
Maybe you have a history of feeling different and explaining this via ‘off the shelf’ pejorative terms such as, ‘too shy’ or ‘misfit’? Since pathologising and othering of neurodivergence is rife, many neurodivergent people have only had negative frameworks to think about themselves; therapy is a place where these perspectives can change.
I am interested in how one’s emotional history coexists with one’s nervous system. Everyone is unique but I find these questions crop up frequently:
- How can we find ways to soothe ourselves against overwhelm?
- Are there ways of living innate to you which have been discouraged?
- What rights might you have come to believe you don’t have?
- When facing life challenges, what is it that is challenged – our nervous system or our emotional system (or both)?
- How might I need to live to ensure my authentic self is honored?
- What’s it like to find out that I need to live differently to the people around me?
- Behind the mask, who am I?
By taking time to allow these questions to live between us, a resolution often arises and new ways to live can be explored and accepted.
The Types of Issues I Support Neurodivergent Clients With
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Identity
- Meaning
Qualifications
Working With Couples -Cedars Therapy Institute
Diploma in Transactional Analysis Counselling, Elan Training & Development 2017-2021
BA Hons Visual Arts Ceramics, Institute of the Arts, London 2001
BSc Hons Chemistry with Philosophy, King’s College, London, 1991
Additional CPD Specific to Neurodiversity
I regularly undertake training to expand and deepen my awareness. Some of the recent CPD I have taken part in has looked at changes in the social position of autism, queerness and neurodiversity, shame, attachment patterns in couples, and autistic trauma.