Therapies For Life Counselling

About Chrissy

Chrissy originally came to counselling through anger management, having lived for a number of years through challenging personal issues and unsuccessful relationships as an angry person in denial. In early 2010 she attended the British Association of Anger Management’s anger management programme led by Mike Fisher finally coming to appreciate the full nature of her anger and the impact that it had on her life.

In early 2010 she attended the British Association of Anger Management’s anger management programme led by Mike Fisher finally coming to appreciate the full nature of her anger and the impact that it had on her life. She then went on to train as an accredited facilitator of anger management programmes with Mike completing her training in November 2010.

Chrissy then gained her Certificate in Counselling Skills through Life-Force, Colchester in December 2011 and qualified in working with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in October 2012. She completed her Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling and Counselling Skills and Theory with Chrysalis Not for Profit in January 2018, and has since completed specialised training to enable her to work online with clients who can’t meet face to face.

She completed a Certificate in Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity Therapy with Pink Therapy in London, having previously attended 6 days of Pink Therapy Essentials in Gender and Sexual Diversity Therapy Training in early 2017. This enables her to work in an affirmative and knowledgeable way with individual and unique genders, sexualities, arousal patterns, participants in BDSM Kink, and sex workers. Currently she is completing a Level 5 course in Working with Sexual and Gender Diverse Clients.

She has a busy private practice in South Cumbria, working with clients face to face and online, as well as working as a counsellor through Outreach Cumbria’s Talk It Out Therapy service where again she sees clients both face to face and online. She also works in the NHS IAPT service working online with clients as a counsellor with Xyla Digital Therapies.

Chrissy adopts an integrative approach to her counselling work underpinned by a person centered, humanistic position but is able to shift to other modes depending on the clients needs. She has found that her own practice is informed through her continued self-development, her work with her clients and her research and learning.

This has led her to appreciate two key elements of counselling – the continual development and deepening of the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client within a safe and secure environment, and her ability as a therapist to accept and value the individuality and importance of her client’s experiences and choices so that she can fully support her client’s unique journey of self-learning and personal development. She has a current, clean enhanced DBS certificate, has full indemnity insurance in place for both her counselling and anger management work.

She is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and holds qualifications in Organizational Data Security Fundamentals and Risk Management. She is an Accredited Registrant member of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society and works under their Code of Ethics. She is also a Professional Member of the Association for Counselling and Therapy Online.

She is a tutor for Chrysalis Courses, teaching a cohort of students in Liverpool on the Chrysalis Level 4 Diploma in Counselling Skills and Theory, and also is a marker of Level 4 end of year studies of skills practice papers. She has recently been appointed as the Marking Mentor for Chrysalis, providing coaching and mentoring to around marking feedback to her fellow tutors. 

She says of herself – I am a highly sensitive introvert, diagnosed dyslexic, dyspraxic, and autistic and self-diagnosed ADHD. I’m 66, trans-femme with a unique sexuality, divorced twice with three children all of whom are grown up. I’ve lived in many parts of the country having moved 16 times in my life, but currently reside in Dalton-In-Furness, South Cumbria following a move here from Colchester, Essex in April 2018.

She says of her counselling work –

“I work from a humanistic background which values and affirms you as an individual, accepting that what is true for you is true for you and that recognizes and supports your desire to understand and change yourself. I aim to create a safe and secure environment in which you feel comfortable to address what is troubling you. 

I utilize an integrated approach, usually working from a person-centered position but using other theories that I have been trained in as appropriate, but the core of my work is in the depth and nature of the relationship that you and I can have which very much involves the core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard – I know that I’ve always been a very non judgmental, accepting person. I also dig deeply into vulnerability and the benefits of being very open in terms of my own life experience and history and find modelling such behaviour in the therapeutic space helps to push back against any shame that you might be finding difficult to manage.

I look to create a balanced relationship between the two of use, working in a collaborative way to enable you to identify what is wrong and empowering you to decide for yourself how you want to go about changing it, if that is what you decide that you want to do.”