About

I offer training on voice hearing (both in-person and online) and consultancy on service provision or development for voice hearers, as well as expert advice for professionals working with voice hearers.

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My training is trauma-informed and based on the values of respect, understanding, and compassion. It incorporates a neurobiologically informed understanding of trauma and dissociation with a practical approach to working with voices, all communicated in clear and accessible language. I combine this with my own experience of trauma, which resulted in a diagnosis of dissociation, depersonalization, and depression, and 20 years of personal lived experience of voice hearing. The result is a unique approach, uniting my expertise-by-experience (as someone who has "been there and done that") with the latest academic research and clinical literature developing our scientific knowledge and understanding.

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My training is integrative in that it adapts interventions from several approaches, including structural dissociation, internal family systems, mindfulness-based approaches, and communications theory.

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 I passionately believe that recovery is possible, and that this is fundamentally to be found in safety in connection, communally and therapeutically, accompanied by psychoeducation which here is an intervention emphasizing the importance of client education to help them understand and cope with their voices. 

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Participants are offered a conceptualization of voices as an understandable response to traumatic events: that is to say, as a dissociative defence against overwhelming experiences and insoluble relational conflicts, especially ongoing ones in childhood. Through the experience of traumatized parts of the self as "not me" so that they are separated from the usual self by dissociative barriers, a trauma survivor is able to preserve a sense of self apart from what is happening and go on with normal life. It is these dissociated, ego-alien, "not me" parts of the self to which inner, hallucinatory voices are closely tied, and against the realization of which they function as a defence. For example, a child voice that cries all the time may function as a defence against those experiences a client most needs to dissociate as "not me": overwhelming experiences of fear, shame, and abandonment. 

 

And participants are offered a model of recovery from the trauma driving voice hearing that involves working through the healthy adult self. The  healthy adult self cultivates the ability for "dual awareness" in which he or she is able to maintain elements of differentiation from the voices while connecting to them through respectful, understanding, and compassionate communication. That is, the healthy adult self can connect to the voices through mindful observation or noticing while remaining grounded in the here and now and in touch with her healthy adult attributes such as maturity, patience, respectfulness, clarity, compassion, and so on. In this way, the healthy adult self is able to establish an integrative relationship with the voices through which he or she can, first, calm and regulate the voices and second, achieve resolution of the inner conflict within the dissociated, internally fragmented self.

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My training is composed of modules, each of which is organized around a key issue in a trauma-informed approach to voice hearing, and presented in clear language accessible to all, professionals and non-professionals alike. Although the training is primarily aimed at mental health organizations and professionals, it is suitable also for other organizations wishing to gain an understanding of voice hearing through education and training, and indeed for voice hearers themselves.

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I have an employment background in the field of adult mental health, and a   post-graduate qualification - that is, an MA - in the philosophy of psychology. I am also a trainee counsellor. In the past 10 years, I have delivered training and education on voice hearing to professionals and academics, and services for voices hearers themselves including peer-support and psychoeducation groups. I have upskilled organizations and professionals through more advanced training and education, and delivered consultancy for mental health staff working in a 1-1 capacity with clients who hear voices.

 

If you're an organization or professional looking for training on voice hearing, please click here.

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