Therapy for Therapists

A place where you do not have to become smaller in order to be met

You spend much of your working life paying close attention to other people.

In here, you do not have to be the one holding everything together.

I offer deeply relational, experiential therapy for women who work as counsellors, psychotherapists, supervisors and other therapeutic practitioners.

Women who need somewhere they can arrive as a whole person without having to perform professional competence.

We begin exactly where you are: overwhelmed, furious, grieving, conflicted, silent, ashamed, frightened, hopeful, confused or completely unsure where to begin.

You are welcome as you are.

You do not have to be the therapist here

Coming to therapy when you are a therapist can carry its own complications.

You may know the language.

You may understand attachment, trauma, transference, protection, shame and survival.

You may recognise your patterns while still being unable to shift what happens inside you.

You may notice the method being used, anticipate the next question or feel responsible for helping the therapist understand you.

You may arrive with a carefully processed account of your experience rather than the raw, unfinished truth of it.

You may fear being judged professionally.

You may wonder whether you should already know how to manage what you are feeling.

You may become the insightful, thoughtful, emotionally articulate client while the parts of you that most need company remain hidden.

With me, you do not need to demonstrate how psychologically informed you are.

You do not need to be impressive, insightful, regulated or easy to work with.

You do not need to make the therapy successful.

You can arrive as yourself.

Therapy that meets all of you

For nearly thirty years, I have worked alongside women whose lives look capable and successful from the outside while, inside, they are carrying pain, loneliness, exhaustion, old wounds, impossible responsibility or a deep sense that they have somehow disappeared from their own lives.

Being a therapist does not remove your own history.

It does not prevent you from being hurt, frightened, overwhelmed, lonely, furious, ashamed or uncertain.

Knowing why something happens does not necessarily change how it lives inside your body or what happens when you are alone with it.

My work is not about fixing you, managing you or teaching you to behave more acceptably.

It is about creating a relationship in which you can hear yourself more clearly, understand the ways you have learned to survive and discover what you need now.

You do not need to arrive knowing what to say, where to begin or how to fill the space between us.

You are not responsible for making the session work.

I am there too.

I bring nearly thirty years of therapeutic experience, everything I have learned through thousands of hours spent alongside women, and the depth of attention that comes from having devoted much of my life to understanding how people survive, self-protect, change and become more fully themselves.

I will meet you with warmth, honesty, curiosity and all of my professional experience.

I will respond to you.

I will ask questions when they may help, notice what seems important and stay alongside you when words are difficult to find.

You do not have to carry the therapy as well as everything else.

We will find our way into the work together.

There is no formula you must fit.
The work grows from who you are.

What you may be carrying

You may have spent years being the strong, capable or emotionally available one.

You may be exhausted from holding other people while quietly losing contact with yourself.

You may feel disconnected from your body, creativity, desire or voice.

You may be living with grief, anger, shame, loneliness, anxiety or trauma.

You may understand your patterns intellectually while knowing that something deeper has not shifted.

You may have been told that you are too sensitive, too emotional, too intense, too needy or simply too much.

You may be questioning your relationship, your work, your identity or the life you have built.

You may be affected by what you encounter in your therapeutic work.

You may be carrying experiences from training, supervision, employment or professional organisations that have left you feeling frightened, silenced, diminished or taught to disappear.

You may want a therapeutic relationship in which you do not have to hide the most complicated parts of yourself.

You may not yet have words for what is happening.

That is also enough.

My way of working

I am a BACP Accredited Counsellor with nearly thirty years’ experience and more than 25,000 hours of therapeutic work.

My approach is relational, person-centred, experiential and creative.

It is informed by many years of working with trauma, attachment, shame, grief, identity and the ways women learn to abandon themselves in order to remain connected to others.

I do not sit at a distance and observe you.

I bring warmth, honesty, depth, curiosity and my full attention to the relationship between us.

I will not take over your life or tell you who to become.

I will not assume that knowing therapeutic theory means I understand your experience better than you do.

You remain the author of your life and the authority on what your experience means.

And throughout our work, we will not lose sight of the person whose life this is:

You

You do not have to tidy yourself away here

Many women have learned to edit themselves before entering a room.

Therapists may become particularly accomplished at doing this.

In our work, you do not have to make your experience easier for me to hear.

You do not have to perform being a good client.

You do not have to apologise for taking up emotional space.

You are allowed to bring the truth of your experience, gradually and in your own way.

Therapy or The Third Space?

Therapy for Therapists is for your own personal therapeutic work.

Your professional experiences can also enter the therapy room when they affect you personally. You do not have to divide yourself artificially into personal and professional parts.

The Third Space is different.

It is practitioner consultation for qualified therapists who need somewhere to think and speak about hierarchy, systemic power, organisational harm, ethical conflict, professional silencing, depletion or cultures of silence.

The Third Space is not therapy or clinical supervision.

If you are unsure which space fits what you are carrying, you do not need to decide alone. You can begin by contacting me, and we can consider it together.

Practical details

Therapy is available online by Zoom and in person from my studio in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

Individual sessions are available in 60-minute and 90-minute formats.

I also offer longer one-to-one creative and therapeutic studio experiences for women who want the space to work more deeply and experientially.

I arrange all appointments personally.

I do not use an automated booking diary because I want us to find a day and time that works properly for both of us.

After you contact me, we can discuss what you are looking for and agree a suitable appointment together.

Once we have agreed the session and time, I will send you the relevant payment information directly.

Begin with a conversation

You do not need to know exactly what you need before contacting me.

You are welcome to tell me a little about what is bringing you to therapy, what you are hoping for, and whether you are interested in online or in-person work.

From there, we can consider whether working together feels right and find a day and time that suits us both.