Ever wondered what motivates our volunteers on their journey to become fully fledged counsellors and psychotherapists?
We love that many of our volunteers and staff are not only expert in their profession, but they also have knowledge and a breadth of experience from before their counselling journey which informs them on their work going forwards. Be it interesting previous jobs, cultural background, family dynamics and more, our experiences help bring us to where we are today.
Shining the spotlight on our amazing volunteers will give you a flavour about what started their passion for counselling and how they are developing their unique identity and practice within the supportive environment of their training establishment and S2BH.
“My name is Julia & I am a Valued Mind Clinician. I am in Advanced Training in relational integrative Psychotherapy at the Scarborough Counselling and Psychotherapy Training Institute (SCIPTI).
As a relational therapist, I am curious about our ways of relating, relating to our environment, to the people around us, and ultimately, to ourselves. I also believe that footprints of our earliest relating can still be found and explored through our ‘here and now’ relationships.
Exploration of those early footprints through therapy is something I am particularly interested in. Just recently I have become a mom myself, having encountered on this exciting, but difficult and challenging adventure of motherhood. I am very lucky to be supported so that I can work, study and pursue my dreams whilst also having a young family around me. For me giving birth was one of the most powerful and most embodied experiences of my life despite it being different from what I had planned for. However, things don’t always work out this way. Many women suffered trauma from conceiving, carrying through a pregnancy and giving birth or because of (often single-) parenting. Bringing those stories alive in the therapy room have become an important part of my therapy work.
“Even these days, it is a challenge to juggle parenthood, the work-life and looking after us. Often parenthood will be the ‘thing’ which many people must hide or put last in the que when dealing with competing priorities in the world out there. However, parenthood is something that is invited and usually will make its way into my therapy room. Sometimes very incidentally. As a therapist working relationally, it is humbling to experience how a client might notice the baby burp marks on my shirt (embarrassing, but impossible to hide…) and, depending on their own process or stage of therapy they go to places of their earliest experiences around parenting or being parented. Parenting for many people was (is) a very challenging, lonely and isolated experience full of fear and judgment, and they had not shared those feelings with anyone, sometimes for decades. Can you imagine what message a frightened, shut down, emotionally numbed mother or father would pass on to their child about the world?
Thankfully, a lot has changed in our society in terms of stereotypes, however, much more could be done, in my opinion, to allow people to be able to freely choose and embrace their parenting part in the various other roles that they take on in life. Being a mother or a father is difficult, requiring a lot of sacrifice. At the same time, I believe that it is a privilege to be able to bring and to nurture a new life in the world. Parenthood should not be restricted to something that we do behind closed doors after work is finished. It is an important part of us, which also needs a lot of attention and nourishing so that it can flourish.
I know that allowing space for people’s parenting stories to emerge and be heard in therapy is a drop in the ocean, but I am confident that the ocean would be a rather small lake without these drops!”
We look forward to continuing to work with Julia on Valued Minds and if you would like to know more about working with someone like Julia get in touch with us:
