Nursing provided me with so many amazing opportunities and experiences and is a profession I am hugely proud of and indebted to. I qualified as a Registered General Nurse in 1983 and as a Registered Mental Health Nurse in 1985.  I have worked overseas and in a variety of NHS  mental health settings specialising in providing community-based mental health care. This has included working with the homeless mentally ill in central London and partnering with local primary care GP clinics in London and the South East of England. I have a Diploma in Community Mental Health Nursing from the University of East London and a Diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy from Goldsmiths, University of London.

What keeps me excited and engaged as a therapist are the patients I see and the stories I hear. Stories have been described as the lifeblood of practising psychotherapy.  A good therapist, regardless of modality, should provide a safe space for patients to share and make sense of their stories.  A desire to not only bear witness to these narratives but to learn more effective ways of alleviating patient distress eventually led in 2001 to obtaining accreditation as a Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist.

Since then I have been an active member of the British Association of Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapists, BABCP.  I was a founder member of the relaunched South East branch and the London Branch. I served on the Communication Committee for five years during which time I was Associate Editor of the membership magazine CBT Today. For the last three years, I have written a regular blog for the Independent Practitioners Special Interest Group. 

I am not a robot. It can be hard to tell these days.