Your career journey?
My career started in teaching. I did a lot of private tutoring, working with young people, creative writing courses. I did my undergraduate in English and Psychology in Canada. I came back from Canada to teach. I pursued my Masters in Education after that. I left teaching when I moved to the United Kingdom in 2001. For a few years, I worked with a youth offending team and the work was in behavioural work, purpose of behaviour and motivation and energization with young offenders. I took a break when I had children. I did my training in PsychoTherapy. It has been counselling work since. I started counselling for a children and young adults NGO. I was then a counsellor at the YMCA. I started my own private practice and started working at the University of Cambridge. There I am a part of the Student Counselling team covering students from under graduation, post graduation and PhD students.
Could you talk about the theoretical influences in your work?
I am a core Adlerian psychotherapist. My training thus was in individual psychotherapy and Adlerian psychotherapy was the school.
How would you describe Adlerian psychotherapy to a layperson?
It is humanistic. The focus is on the individual. In Adlerian psychotherapy you focus on the lens by which you see the world. The term is lifestyle, that determines how you see your life, how you make choices and how you see challenges. It is not what happened to you but what you made, your perspective of what happens to you.
In working with clients, I do a lot of early memory work. How you see the world is seen in your early memories – your logic, your core belief.
Could you talk about using storytelling in your work?
Storytelling is subject to the therapist and every Adlerian psychotherapist may use storytelling. We may use what is the favourite story, your childhood story. This will tell what resonates with you. In the story the person comes out in a specific way.
Do you use personal narratives or general stories in your work?
We can do both. If someone likes Little Red Riding Hood, we can talk about what made you connected to that particular story, a personal experience. My favourite story is ‘Butterfly lovers’ a Chinese story. The protagonist wants to learn and study. She was not educated and not energised to go to school. But the protagonist had a deep love for learning. She did what she had to do to get what she wanted. It was a story my mother told me. It was a story I had watched the opera performance of.
Story Practices 