‘All you have to do is earn your clients’ trust and not break it’
That was the advice I was given when I first started working with people who struggled with drug addiction, and its advice that still underpins all I do.
I changed career about 20yrs ago and retrained as a NLP Psychotherapist and began working in government funded addiction projects as I felt people who can’t afford private fees should still get the top quality help they needed.
Since then I have strived to keep growing and be the best I can for my clients, most of which sadly meant training myself as the training I was offered usually involved the latest ‘evidence based’ technique rather than who you actually are as a person delivering it. And yet that is what made the biggest difference to my clients, not what I did but how.
Things seem to be getting more targets driven and less about people, which usually results in less targets being met.
All the top management advice is now about inspiring staff and relationships.
All the top research into how to help people is all about inspiring people and relationships.
And yet all the training is all about techniques.
I want to bring the humanity back – which involves how we treat each other as well as our clients.
It’s about bringing the best out in our staff so they can be their best, and help clients be their best too.
Win win
I have worked in all areas of addiction – drugs, alcohol, criminal justice, homeslessness, rehab and detox etc, and also worked in community development and mental health, and on everything else in between.
It always made sense to me to treat the underlying pain, and so I have utilized the findings around the ACE Study and all the wonderful work that is being done to promote that.
Trained in:
NLP Psychotherapy x2 (first time 20yrs ago to learn the how to, 2nd 2 yrs ago to learn the who to be)
Train the trainer
CBT, Brief Solution focused therapy, Motivational Interviewing, Evolutionary Kinesiology, Mindfulness
Advanced relapse prevention skills (with Terry Gorski no less!)
(And lots of other one day related, or business type training when I worked as a Radio Engineer)
Future plans:
I want to set up online resources/ Masterclass courses and write a book sharing all I have learnt