I have spent almost 30 years working within the ambulance service. I began my career in Patient Transport Services before progressing through a range of clinical, leadership and management roles, including Technician, Paramedic, Paramedic Team Leader, Clinical Team Mentor, Operational and Tactical Commander, and more recently Workforce Manager.

My operational career eventually came to an end following years of cumulative exposure to traumatic incidents. Stepping away from frontline practice was more than simply a change of role. For a long time, being capable, resilient, dependable and someone others could rely upon had become an important part of how I understood myself. When that changed, I found myself having to consider who I was beyond the uniform and the role I had held for so many years.

My own experience of therapy, alongside my training as a psychotherapist, has changed my understanding of what it means to be strong. I have learned that resilience isn’t simply about enduring more, pushing difficult feelings aside or continuing regardless. Sometimes strength is found in allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, recognising when something has affected us and being willing to understand why.

That process has also helped me recognise how our ways of coping rarely begin with the situation immediately in front of us. The strategies that once helped us manage, protect ourselves or keep going can have much earlier roots. Understanding those patterns with curiosity rather than judgement can create space for something different.

This personal and professional journey inevitably informs the therapist I am today. I know what it is like to be accustomed to being the person who copes and then discover that coping has come at a cost. It is one of the reasons I believe so strongly in offering a space where you don’t have to be the professional, the resilient one or the person looking after everybody else.

training & experience

I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the Sherwood Psychotherapy Training Institute (SPTI), where my training supported the development of a humanistic and integrative approach to therapy.

Alongside my therapeutic work, I continue to work within the ambulance service, where part of my role involves supporting colleagues following traumatic and distressing incidents. My experience has given me a particular understanding of the impact that emergency-service work can have, both professionally and personally.

My therapeutic experience includes working with adults and young people affected by bereavement and loss, trauma and historical sexual abuse. I recognise that people come to therapy with very different experiences, and I aim to offer a space where those experiences can be explored safely, at a pace that feels manageable and without judgement.