About Charlotte

Counselling is my second career. Before retraining to be a counsellor I worked for over 35 years in health and social care as well as university education where I taught medical students communication skills and supported their wellbeing.

I have had my own firsthand experience of the value of counselling that helped me so much. Because of my experience of counselling and my desire to work with people needing the kind of support I received I felt a powerful pull to train as a counsellor.

Biography

I am a fully qualified counsellor with a Level 6 Diploma in Humanistic and Integrative Counselling from Bath Centre for Psychotherapy & Counselling (BCPC) (www.bcpc.org.uk). This means I have trained for over six years in both theory and practice. My advanced diploma means I am both totally centred on you and, where appropriate, can draw on psychodynamic theories to help you explore your past, present and future. Among other perspectives my practice is informed by Person Centred Counselling, Attachment theory, Compassion Focused Therapy, Parts Theory, Transactional Analysis, Trauma Theory and Existential Therapy.

I also have a MSc in Gerontology and a PhD in Communication in Health.

Over my life I have developed a passion for listening to what really matters to people and hearing what they are really telling me. My personal and professional life experience has bought me to this second career and there is little that fulfils me more than working in a counselling relationship with clients.

I am a registered member of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP membership number 00992292, Register number 418530). I adhere to the BACP Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions and I have regular supervision. I have an enhanced DBS Certificate and regular CPD.

What I believe

I believe strongly in the process of working alongside a professionally trained counsellor to find a better way to live our lives.

My philosophy stems from a deep respect for humanity as a whole, and a belief in the integrated nature of our body-mind. We are our bodies but sometimes we can feel we live entirely in our heads where our thoughts will naturally dominate. Yet we often store so much pain and suffering in our bodies expressed through aches & pains, digestive problems, poor health and disease ... to name a few.

"Major calamities of body and mind are only the latest and loudest summons from the essential parts of ourselves we have lost touch with."
Maté, 2022:408

My approach fundamentally starts with you as a unique individual with your own story, needs, experiences and challenges. For me, healing begins when we are able to accept who we are. As Carl Rogers (1961) wrote, this is when change can occur.

".. face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are."
Soren Kierkegaard (1843) quoted in Rogers 1961:110

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