Clinical Background and Experience

Eighteen Years in the NHS — And What It Taught Me About People

Before I became a therapist, I spent eighteen years working inside the NHS.

I did not arrive in therapy through a comfortable academic route. I arrived through wards, community teams, medication reviews, multidisciplinary meetings, and years of sitting alongside people in some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

I want to tell you what those years actually looked like — because I think it matters when you are choosing someone to trust with your inner world.

Where It Began

I started in 2000, working with people with profound learning disabilities and needs that challenge. This was not straightforward work. It asked for patience, presence, and a willingness to understand people who could not always communicate their experience in conventional ways. It taught me early that behaviour is always communication — that what looks difficult on the outside is almost always pain, fear, or unmet need on the inside.

I then moved into community learning disability services, working with individuals whose behaviour presented significant challenges, coordinating with multidisciplinary teams and navigating complex networks of care across multiple services. I learned how systems can both support and fail people, and how much difference one consistent, trustworthy presence can make.

Elderly Mental Health

From there I moved into elderly mental health services — working with people living with dementia, Alzheimer's, and general mental health conditions alongside the particular vulnerabilities that come with age.

In this role I worked closely with psychiatrists, psychologists, and pharmacists. I conducted medication reviews for antipsychotic and dementia medications, liaised with physical health hospitals, nursing homes, GPs, and wider community services. I learned to hold complexity — medical, psychological, relational, and ethical complexity — simultaneously.

I saw what happens when a person loses their sense of self. I saw what families carry. I saw how the medical system can miss the human being inside the patient. That never left me.

Acute and Specialist Wards

I went on to work on acute wards including a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit, adult mental health, and eating disorder services — including working with children and young people with eating disorders.

A PICU is not a gentle environment. The people admitted there are in crisis — sometimes the most acute, frightening, and complex crisis of their lives. Working there required steadiness, clear boundaries, genuine compassion, and the ability to remain present with people whose suffering was at its most raw and visible.

Eating disorder work — particularly with young people — asked something different again. It asked for patience over urgency, relationship over technique, and a deep respect for how complex the relationship between identity, control, and survival can become.

What Those Years Gave Me

Eighteen years in the NHS gave me something no training course can fully provide.

It gave me an understanding of human suffering that is grounded in reality rather than theory. I have sat with people across the full spectrum of mental health experience — from mild anxiety to acute psychosis, from early memory loss to profound disability, from a teenager who had stopped eating to a person in the last chapter of their life.

I have worked within systems, alongside psychiatrists and psychologists, and I have also seen where those systems fall short. I know what clinical care can offer and I know what it cannot reach.

What it cannot always reach is the person underneath the diagnosis.

That is where I work now.

Why This Matters For You

When you come to Self and Shadow Therapy, you are not working with someone who has only ever sat in a therapy room.

You are working with someone who has spent nearly two decades inside the NHS — across learning disabilities, elderly mental health, acute wards, eating disorders, and intensive psychiatric care. Someone who has conducted medication reviews, navigated multidisciplinary teams, and held space for people whose suffering was visible, complex, and real.

I left the NHS to become a therapist because I wanted to work differently. Not within a system constrained by time, targets, and diagnosis — but in a space where the whole person can be seen, heard, and understood.

That is what I offer here.

Not a quick fix. Not a diagnosis. Not a treatment plan written by committee.

A genuine, experienced, human presence — one that has seen enough of life to sit alongside yours without flinching.

People and culture

Our people are what make us unique. Rather than outsourcing our construction engineers from questionable outsourcing establishments, we provide them with an environment that supports professional growth.

We are strong believers in giving our employees a voice. Our teams are put together with the help of our resident psychologist to ensure maximum productivity and engagement.