Masterclass programme
First Saturday of the month (Oct, Dec, Feb, April, June, August)
1-3.30pm
Online
Masterclasses: £35 or £180 (£30 per workshop) if purchased in advance.
Each Masterclass is 2.5 hours long and held on zoom and recorded so you can catch up if you miss it.
Business planning and marketing for success
Assessment and Intake - Working with risk and complexity
Working with Trauma, and Trauma Informed practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy
Working with the Erotic in Counselling and Psychotherapy
An introduction to mind-body approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy
An Introduction to Narrative Approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy
Month 1:
Business planning and marketing for success
Becoming a 'solopreneur' is not in the training!
As a counsellor finding your self seeing clients and building a business is hard work! This Masterclass will support your business development, in the company of other counsellors in similar positions, and will consider: business planning, funding streams, profile development, making social media work for you, website design, working for private insurers, Fee-setting, establishing a sustainable business/caseload/portfolio working. (Online)
Month 3:
Assessment and Intake - Working with risk and complexity
Working with risk and complexity in private practice can feel daunting and this Masterclass is designed to support you navigating this sensitive area of work. Includes initial assessments/risk assessments (child Abuse (Safeguarding), domestic abuse (MARAC), self harm and suicide), onwards referrals, working in partnership with others, working with clients who self harm/are suicidal. (Online)
Month 5:
Working with Trauma and Trauma Informed practice in counselling and psychotherapy
This Masterclass is modelled on Babette Rothschild's somatic trauma therapy model (Rothschild, Babette The Body Remembers, Norton 2000,2017) exploring and understanding how trauma stores in the body, and how to work with this. Includes live demonstrations working integratively and somatically with anonymised clinical case material. (Online)
Month 7:
Working with the Erotic in counselling and psychotherapy
Initial training rarely gives sufficient attention to the presence of the erotic and sexuality within the clinical setting, and moreover this area of work can stimulate complex feelings within us. This masterclass will explore the theory behind how we understand the presence of the erotic within our work, and provide space for the exploration of these themes with a view to demystifying this important aspect of our work.
Priestman, Allison. “Too Hot to Handle? Working with Erotic Charge.” Psychotherapy and politics international 17.3 (2019): n. pag. Web.
(Online)
Month 9:
An introduction to mind-body approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy
We are not just our minds, we are all that lies within, beyond and between us. We relate to others on both psychological and embodied levels and this workshop will introduce you to ways of coming into contact with interoceptive cues, and supporting our clients in the same to deepen therapeutic contact. Through the exploration of the process of Body Dreaming (Dunlea, Marian BodyDreaming in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma. 1st ed. Routledge 2019 ) using active imagination (not the same as guided meditation), you will develop ways of working that is deeper and more intuitive, expanding capacity for the same in your clients. (Online)
Month 11:
Narrative Approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy
The story of who we are and how we have arrived at this point in our lives is complex. As relational beings we naturally tell the stories we hold about ourselves, to be heard and to be witnessed. This process is inherently transformational, and community forming, however for many of us we have lost the skill of sharing and developing stories that heal, instead becoming disconnected from ourselves, and from others. Exploring the work of Epston and White, (Epston, David and White, Michael Narrative means to Narrative Ends, Norton, 1990) and Lewis Mehl Madrona (Mehl-Madrona. Lewis Healing the Mind through the Power of Story the Promise of Narrative Psychiatry. Rochester, Vt: Bear & Co., 2010), we will look at ways of supporting the telling and retelling of stories for healing.
Masterclasses: £35 per workshop, or £180 (£30 per workshop) if purchased in advance.
Each Masterclass is 2.5 hours long and held on zoom.
All trainings comes with a CPD certificate issued after completion of each element.
Contact me, and let's see how we can work together!
07788910805 abigail@cumbriapsychotherapy.com
NEW!! Mentoring and Support programme
NEW!! Mentoring and Support programme
Training as a counsellor and psychotherapist takes significant investment, in time, money and emotions.
Training as a counsellor and psychotherapist takes significant investment, in time, money and emotions.
In an ever changing world many emerging counsellors and therapists wonder "Where next?".
In an ever changing world many emerging counsellors and therapists wonder "Where next?".
Mentoring for Success in Professional and Private Practice
For counsellors and psychotherapists
community/peer meeting online every month to share practice and development
(1.5 hours online)
Cost: £30 per month
Initial training provides the foundations for solid clinical practice, but often the nuts and bolts of how to develop your own practice are not covered.
As well as being a psychotherapist and a clinical supervisor, I have also trained on counselling and psycotherapy programmes, and I know first hand the limitations of initial counsellor training and with this in mind, have developed a mentoring package that is designed carefully to pay attention to the support and business development needs of therapists, with the added benefit of a CPD package.
I have a wealth of experience developing counselling and psychotherapy services, working across all the various sectors including the private sector, the third sector, NHS, local and national government and academia throughout the last two decades (scroll down to see more).
Whether you're looking to create a private practice, set up a community interest group or charity, or develop your working "portfolio", I can offer help and guidance.
Lets see what we can create together!
What's my background and why work with me?
I first trained as a co-counsellor in 1991, beginning a lifelong interest in ways of healing, both for myself, and for others. Twenty one years ago I was a teacher in a deprived area in the north of England where the poorest and most vulnerable were expected to learn whilst little or no attention was paid to their emotional wellbeing. I redirected my skills, leaving teaching to establish a charity specialising in offering counselling and psychotherapy to children and families who had experienced sexual and domestic abuse. At the point of my departure in 2016 the charity was attracting funding of + £300K per year and still continues offering specialist support.
I began my trauma training in 2008 with the world renowned trainer and author Babbette Rothschild (https://www.somatictraumatherapy.com/ ), and from there, winding my way through Psychotherapy, Play therapy and Narrative therapy training, amongst others.
Working with the mind and body has always made so much sense to me. There hasn't been a single person who has come to see me or my colleagues through the years for emotional support who wasn't also experiencing enormous amounts of physical pain and disturbance, often classed as "medically unexplained", whilst physically expressing the story of heavy burdens of emotional pain.
In the autumn of 2017 I was offered an extraordinary opportunity within a GP Practice to both develop the business, and to develop the emotional support offering there. Working with the practice team we developed a way of working as a team, which still remains somewhat revolutionary, and was based on Frederick Laloux's model of Halocracy - a way of deconstructing power and promoting collaborative working across teams (https://www.reinventingorganizations.com/ ).
Whilst in this post I developed and led a new complex trauma pathway that was combined with the Practice's opiate reduction programme, offering longer term mind-body psychotherapy to adults experiencing chronic pain who also lived with complex histories of maltreatment and abuse.
From 2019 I have been growing and developing a small private practice, unsure of what shape that might take. Well, it was taking great shape and in 2022 I moved sideways towards this venture at the end of my time in the NHS, committed to being able to work long term with trauma. My private practice has grown exponentially since then and now sustains me both emotionally, practically and financially in ways I could not have imagined.
Portfolio working has offered me ways to remain connected with others and led me towards working combining private practice and academia, initially traching on the undergraduate BSc in Counselling and Psychology at Staffordshire University, and latterly on the post-graduate professional training programmes (PG Cert and PG Dip) at Edinburgh University (https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/teaching-fellow).
This work gave me the extraordinary benefit of being able to learn from others, and specifically to really delve into the politics of psychotherapy, deepening, developing and decolonising my own practice and training offerings.
Consulting and Mentoring
Consulting and Mentoring
My consultancy work has grown and developed across the years and has included a three year tenure on the Victim's Advisory Panel within the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, Chairing various strategic and operational groups on themes such as Child Sexual Exploitation and Safeguarding, developing Trauma Informed teaching practice across schools in the North-East and Cumbria (https://osiriseducational.co.uk/blog/presenters/abigail-finnegan/), Training Aid workers overseas (https://genchayat.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/240330-EarthquakeReport.pdf), and delivering strategic training across all sectors relating to trauma and service development.
Through the development of my various strands of work I have held a core ethical belief that therapy needs to be accessible. I'm hoping to bring some of what I have learned to therapists looking to develop their offering, perhaps into private practice, perhaps developing community based services including community interest groups and charities, perhaps developing services at strategic level.
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