About Me
My Story
In Child and Adolescent mental health, I worked with young people who were self harming, struggling with anxiety, obsessions or depression, those who were looked after by the state and those who had rubbed shoulders with the law.
I also worked with young people who were involved in serious violence. These experiences form the foundation of my professional self and expertise as a therapist. In this role, I had the privilege of taking a step back and reflecting on and with professional systems.
As the African proverb goes, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. This created space for teams to slow down, widen their gaze and pay attention to their patterns of communication and relating and the cultures they created. This cast a different lens on understanding of the problem. The problem became the problem. It moved the problem from being located in a person, a team or a department.
On this, I built my expertise as a consultant. I worked with teams and organisational systems to bring about inclusive change. As a change practitioner, I hold the space between the change framework, the leadership and the people.
As a family therapist, I work with family systems, as a consultant, I work with teams as a system. As a coach, I work with both individuals and teams separately or in parallel to embed my work as a consultant.
My training as a psychotherapist underpins my work as a Consultant and as a Coach.
My Approach & Philosophy
My approach to therapy is influenced by a sense of curiosity around the interconnected nature of human relationships. Human beings are relational beings. By being curious about one’s relationships and feelings of connectedness, or lack of, I am able to understand the context within which my client’s tensions, challenges or struggles come from. This allows me to understand behaviour in context and helps me to separate the person from the problem. By attending to the problem in this way, I create a space where my client can visualize themselves in a new context where they are not the problem. This lens affords me the ability to be person centred and culturally sensitive.
As a therapist, I am aware that I am not objective but very subjective. This is because I bring my multiple selves into the room. This does not mean that I am emotionally unwell, it means that I am aware that my gendered self; my racialized self; my cultured self only to name a few will have an impact on how I understand and make sense of my client’s challenges.
As a consultant, I am conscious of unconscious processes and work with these in transference or countertransference.
As a coach, I am aware of how the brain works and uphold neuroplasticity to bring about change.
Family Therapy.
Family therapy means that I work from the premise that a problem lies within the family as a whole rather than in a single person in the family unit. This means that I see problems as emanating from relationships and interactional patterns. Family therapy does not mean that the whole family needs to attend sessions all the time.
As a family therapist, I can work with any part of your family unit. My training affords me the ability to work with individuals but still hold in mind the family relationships that are important or are contributing towards you attending therapy. This means that I can work with an individual, siblings, parents, grandparents, friend, aunts or uncles…..anyone who is important to my client. This is because family is not just about your blood relations but the relationships that are important to you.
Through consultation or at the end of a session, we can have a conversation on who can come to the next session.
Please see the drop down menu for my areas of expertise. Remember the menu is not exhaustive, so give me a call if you can`t find what you are looking for on the menu. Nothing beats a conversation!
Please see my recent piece of spoken word for Black History Month: