I absolutely love what I do, everyday!
My journey to becoming a Couples Therapist and Sex Therapist has been a very interesting one. I started my career as a schoolteacher and then transitioned to school counselling.
During this role, I worked with many students who were deeply impacted by family discord and parents who were struggling with managing their relationship and parenting. This got me thinking that no one teaches us how to be a parent and how to be in an intimate relationship. We literally “fall into it” and are expected to know how to be effective partners and parents.
Parents are our role models and if we did not have the opportunity to grow up in a loving, secure family, we do not have a yardstick to measure what a healthy relationship and an unhealthy one looks like. When we form intimate relationships, we bring our early experiences (childhood and past relationship experiences) into the relationship unknowingly. This can impact the relationship and cause distress between partners which then has a flow on effect on the children.
Being a parent myself and having faced many challenges in my marriage as well, it was motivation enough for me to seek strategies to improve my parenting and relationship skills. This ultimately led to my career redirection into Couples and Sex Therapy.
Healthy relationships are an integral part of living a fulfilled life.
When we face life’s challenges, however, we may resort to unhealthy ways of dealing with it like belittling each other; not validating a partner’s emotions; angry outbursts; threats; blaming and criticism amongst others. These actions cause a disconnect between couples both emotionally, mentally and physically. If this pattern repeats itself, it can leave people feeling broken; worn out; frustrated and overwhelmed.
Kintsugi, which means “to patch with gold"
I am deeply inspired by an old Japanese Art that I feel links so beautifully with relationships. There is a mending tradition in Japan, called kintsugi. Kintsugi, which means “to patch with gold,” is the art of mending broken pottery, not by treating the break as something to hide, but as something to revere as part of the object’s history.
“Often, we try to repair broken things in such a way as to conceal the repair and make it “good as new.”
But the tea masters understood that by repairing the broken bowl with the distinct beauty of radiant gold, they could create an alternative to “good as new” and instead, employ a “better than new” aesthetic. They understood that a conspicuous, artful repair actually adds value. Because after mending, the bowl’s unique fault lines were transformed into little rivers of gold that post-repair were even more special because the bowl could then resemble nothing but itself” (Fernandez).
When the fault lines of conflict show up in a personal, professional, or business relationship, we have this idea that resolution must somehow make things as good as new. Sometimes we even demand that the other make us whole again.
But there is no cure that erases the remnants of damage done. Traces of our pain, of the distrust that gnawed our souls, of fear of what would happen — those traces live in the recesses of our minds, a trickle of unease that haunts us when we try to glue the fault lines back together and make it appear like they never happened.
As I work with couples when they are sorting out relationship conflict, we focus on transforming that trickle of unease into a trickle of radiant gold by revering, perhaps even illuminating, the flaws that make their relationship unique — one of a kind, imperfectly special, a relationship that has weathered something difficult and come out stronger on the other side.
Authenticity
Non-judgemental
Compassion
Confidentiality
Professional Experience
- More than three decades of international and local experience in counselling and education.
- Vast experience working with children, youth and families, couples and women from diverse cultural backgrounds.
- Holistic counsellor and drawing on different counselling modalities to suit the client’s needs, namely Emotionally Focused Therapy; Imago Relationship Therapy; Solution-Focused Therapy; Cognitive Behaviour Therapy; Motivational Interviewing; Mindfulness and Narrative Therapy.
- I have a deep sense of the importance of spirituality and how it contributes to a person’s well-being as well as how this works in with the counselling process.
Professional Qualifications
- Masters in Science in Medicine (Sexual Health and Reproduction) Psychosexual Therapy
- Masters in Counselling
- Masters in School Management
- PG Dip (SM)
- B Ed (Sch Guidance and Counselling)
- BPaed in Arts (Sec Sch Teaching)
- Certificate in Grief Counselling
Professional Memberships
- Level 4 Clinical Counsellor and Counselling Supervisor, ACA
- Member of ICEEFT (International Centre of Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy)
- Member of SAS (Society of Sexologists)
- Christian Women in Business and Leadership
