Most of us are familiar with talk therapy — reflecting, reframing, making sense of our experiences through conversation. That’s valuable and time-tested, and it’s part of what I do. But experience lives in layers. There’s what we think and remember, what we feel and imagine, and then something deeper still – the way the body itself holds onto things, long after the mind has tried to move on.

Creative art psychotherapy works in the middle layer using image, symbol, and metaphor to give shape to things that are hard to say directly. It creates a little distance, which can actually make it easier to see clearly.  It brings the body into the conversation.

Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) works in a deeper layer still. It’s a structured, evidence-based approach that works directly with how the nervous system has stored difficult experiences. The limiting beliefs, the inner critic, the anxiety or low mood that just won’t shift despite your best efforts – this is where ART tends to reach what other methods can’t. It’s also, in many cases, remarkably efficient: people often notice real change in just one or two sessions.

What draws me to ART is that it’s sophisticated, creative, and simple. It works, and with the right pace and guidance, it works gently.

I started out as an artist, a trained illustrator and graphic designer and the creative impulse has been central to everything I’ve done since. In the mid-1990s I began bringing art into mental health settings, working in residential environments alongside people navigating some of the hardest seasons of their lives. That combination of art and human need felt right, and I’ve never really moved away from it.

I completed my Masters in Art Psychotherapy and qualified as an HCPC registered Allied Health Professional in 2018.  I have since worked with a wide range of people: women in crisis, children with social, emotional and mental health needs, elders with early-onset dementia, refugee populations, and adult survivors of childhood trauma and sexual abuse. Over eight years of practice, my approach has become genuinely integrative, I use what works, and I stay curious about what else might.

Today, my focus is primarily on adults dealing with trauma including early developmental trauma and I have a particular interest in those deep-rooted patterns that have resisted other forms of help. ART became part of my practice because I recognised there was a gap nothing else was filling. In my experience, ART fills it.

I want every session to count. Not in a grand sense – sometimes what counts is a small shift in perspective, a moment of recognition, something quietly clicking into place. I want you to leave each session with something: a little more ease, a little more clarity, a slightly better sense of yourself.

Over time, my hope is that you find yourself better equipped and more able to navigate your inner life and the world around you. That you reach a point of genuine self-mastery. Not perfection. Just increasing ease in being yourself.

I take each person seriously. In my best moments as a therapist, I bring my whole self not just my training, but genuine curiosity and care for the person in front of me. I often find that my clients teach me as much as I offer them. The mutuality of two people collaborating, walking alongside each other for a while is something I find both humbling and deeply meaningful.

I’m guided in my work by lines from the Bodhisattva prayer for Humanity: “May I be a guide and companion for those on the path, a bridge for those who wish to cross the flood, a resting place for the weary, a lamp in the darkness.”  That’s the spirit I try to bring. You won’t be navigating this alone.

You can also expect honesty and a strong ethical foundation. I work hard, I keep learning, and I care not in an abstract way, but for each specific person who sits across from me.