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Hello

I’m Karen

I am delighted that you have found me here and are considering taking that first step to reach out and get the help you need. Here’s a little about me and the way I work.

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Background

My career began as a movement psychotherapist working with children and adults with learning disabilities, ASD and other emotional and behavioural difficulties. I ran projects for the national Autisitc Society, Parkinson’s UK, Swansea University and The British psychotherapy association, amongst others. I worked for the Touch Trust, a Welsh charity specialising in learning disabilities, ASD and other Neuro-divergent needs. Delivering creative, movement and multi-sensory sessions; training teachers, carers and social workers nationwide to provide therapeutic sessions for their classrooms and homes and in one-to-one sessions through music and movement for a decade; and was the acting designated safeguarding person (DSP).

I was offered a post in a forensic unit in Cardiff with young adults, eventually leading me to start up in private practice in 2015.
Throughout my work with people with anxieties, traumas, difficulties in relationships, psychosomatic illnesses, stress and depression, I have found that there is often a constant fear or panic; many people believe this means they are faulty in some way, but fear and anxiety indicate CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). This is common in people with relational traumas and relational ruptures throughout their lives. It shows Interpersonal difficulties, emotional dysregulation, unexplainable psychosomatic symptoms and negative self-beliefs connected to shame and guilt. C-PTSD is a shattering of goodness, of sound relational systems in one’s life.

Porthcawl

Today, I think of my work as helping people find goodness again; my approach is shaped by my experiences of being in therapy, Person-centred, Integrative, Art, Movement and Transactional Analysis.


Transactional Analysis (TA) is a psychotherapeutic approach to healing and understanding how humans work and relate to one another. It explains the complex voices and feelings we all hear and acts out.

• The Parent Ego State represents the beliefs inherited from our families and culture. The behaviours, thoughts and feelings that have been introjected by parents and figures
• The Adult Ego State is the behaviours, thoughts and feelings that directly respond to the here and now, and this Ego State is fluid, full of energy and growth.
• The Child Ego State represents how we have reacted to these beliefs and the situations we have been through, such as traumatic experiences and unmet needs and how we have adapted.

Being in a relationship together is how we work relationally and co-creatively.


I am a member of the United Kingdom Association of Transactional Analysis (UKATA), the European Association of Transactional Analysis (EATA), the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA), the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS) and (ACTO) Association of Online Counselling and Therapy.
I work within the United Kingdom Association Counselling and Psychotherapy (UKCP) Ethical framework and am under regular twice-monthly clinical supervision. I am committed to continued professional and personal development and maintaining sensitivity to the body–mind–heart connection.

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Qualifications

My Qualifications are

  • MA Movement Psychotherapy Canterbury Christchurch University
  • MNCS Accred. Counsellor
  • Diploma in Advanced Counselling Supervision
  • Clinical Transactional Analysis PG Diploma

My ongoing Professional Development Training includes

  • TA 101 – TACymru
  • Tending to trauma and the trauma pathway-BdT Trauma Recovery Training & Consultancy
  • Certificate in working with trauma- Becoming Ubuntu
  • Working with the Traumatised Inner Child (C-PTSD)- Becoming Ubuntu
  • Couples Counselling – Glocestershire Counselling Service
  • Eco-Therapy’ working without walls’-TACymru
  • Child Sexual Abuse and how to work with Survivors- NCPS
  • Working with the dynamics of shame- Carolyn Spring
  • Working with survivors of Narcissistic and Emotional Abuse
  • Working with grief and Loss
  • Energy psychology training
  • Internal Family systems
  • Family Constellations