About Claire

How I’m trained and regulated

I’m registered with the UKCP as a full clinical member (Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy College) as well as registered as a senior accredited practitioner with the NCPS (National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society). I also hold a PhD in Psychology and am a Chartered Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the BPS (British Psychological Society).

• Somatic and creative approaches to therapy.
• Musicians and music industry professionals.
• Men's mental health.
• Sexuality, sexual identity, and orientation (LGBTQIA+)/Gender and Sexual Relationship Diversity (GSRD).
• Neurodivergence (especially if identified later in life or suspected)
• Spirituality and existential meaning.
• Racialised identities, whiteness, and culture.
• Health, especially living with HIV.
• The therapeutic relationship.
• Attachment over the lifespan.
• Anxiety, anger, shame, and grief.
• Clinical supervision.

Clinical qualifications

My core MSc clinical training in Integrative psychotherapy at the Metanoia Institute in London took five years, including a mandated four years of personal psychotherapy and a psychiatric placement. My training aligns with Column C of the Scope of Practice and Education (ScopEd) framework, representing the highest level of training. Overall, I've had my own therapy (psychodynamic, integrative) for 13 years and can therefore appreciate the therapy experience from a client perspective.

I am a fully trained EMDR therapist (Alexandra Richman training) and have completed, and continue to complete, somatic and sensorimotor CPD on wellbeing. I tend to approach EMDR from an attachment focused position with an awareness of Internal Family Systems: How different parts of ourselves might become part of EMDR work. I regularly complete a variety of continuing professional development training.

In addition to my clinical qualifications and training, I am a qualified higher education lecturer with over 20 years experience teaching psychology. I hold British Psychological Society Chartered status as a Psychologist (PhD).

I hold an enhanced DBS certificate and am fully insured.

Counselling and Psychotherapy training

• Certificate of Higher Education in Psychodynamic Counselling (with Distinction) — Vaughan College, University of Leicester
• Clinical Diploma in Integrative Psychodynamic Counselling — Metanoia Institute
• Clinical Diploma in Integrative Psychotherapy (Level 7) — Metanoia Institute
• MSc Integrative Psychotherapy (Level 7 with Distinction) — Metanoia Institute
• Diploma in Clinical Supervision (Level 7 with Distinction) — UKCP/SCPTI

Other qualifications

• PhD Psychology — University of Leicester
• Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Teaching (PGCHE) — Nottingham Trent University
• BSc (Hons) Psychology — University College London

I have worked for many years across therapeutic, academic, and training settings within the public and charity sectors. I have particular experience supporting people living with HIV, having worked as a Buddy in London in the 1990s and later as an independent counsellor within an HIV charity. My particular interest in HIV work culminated in a publication exploring the lived experience of people living with long-term HIV, diagnosed prior to antiretroviral therapy becoming available. You can read this publication here.

Alongside my psychotherapy, supervision, and training work, I bring a lifelong connection to music. Since 2021, I have collaborated as a vocalist and writer on a range of musical projects, resulting in several independently released electronic-based tracks. I understand music—whether as a listener, creator, or performer—to be a powerful source of emotional regulation, and I value its profound capacity to support psychological wellbeing.

• UKCP Registration number: 2011165015
• NCPS Membership number: NCS24-0357 (Senior accredited)

I have always been a deeply curious person—curious about how we become who we are, how people find one another, and what happens to us through the many relationships and contexts that become part of our life story.

Research and writing have been part of that curiosity throughout much of my professional life. My PhD explored how attachment styles, anger and aggression relate to one another, predominantly using psychometric methods. It taught me something about the value of looking for patterns: the experiences we share, the things that can be measured, and what we might learn by looking across the lives of many people.

Through my experience as a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and a client myself for many years, I have also come to understand something critically important: a person is always more than the pattern.

However much we may have in common, nobody arrives in the therapy room simply as a collection of scores, symptoms or categories. We arrive with unique histories and relationships, and with the echo of people we have loved and people who may have hurt us. We arrive with diverse, intersecting identities that we have discovered, inherited, fought for or sometimes had to hide. We bring the ways we have learned to protect ourselves, and the parts of ourselves we may still be trying to understand or discover.

And then there is what happens between us, as we work together to make sense of your experiences and help you feel more at home in yourself and in your life.

This is perhaps where my deepest interest lies now. I do not believe that therapy is something to be done to another person. It is something we enter into together, in relationship. I bring my experience, knowledge and curiosity, but I also want to discover how the world looks from where you are standing. Through this exploration, which is not always easy and is rarely quick, I believe we can begin to heal and feel more whole.

My published writing has explored some of these questions from different directions. It includes Our Voice as a Legacy, exploring trauma, resilience and post-traumatic growth among people living with long-term HIV; Dark Shadow of the Self, examining the relationships between personality traits, empathy and attachment; and a co-authored book chapter exploring identity, stressors and mental health among sexual minority people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

Looking back across that work, I can see a thread that still runs through the way I practise:

How do we become ourselves in relationship with other people? Which parts of us have been seen and welcomed? Which have been misunderstood, rejected, or kept out of sight? And what might become possible when another person is willing to stay alongside us while we begin to understand those parts for ourselves?

Research can tell us something about people. Relationship allows us to come to know a person in their unique world.

For me, both begin with curiosity—and with the willingness and desire to listen. This is at the heart of how I understand therapy.

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