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Pathways to Transformation
Pathways to Transformation
Pathways to transformation
Pathways to transformation
You are invited to join me on the celtic festival of Samhain, 31st October and and 1st November 2025, a time of reflection as we move into the darkness of the winter months, a time for change.
Stress, distress and trauma can result in significant disconnection, both from others, and from ourselves. This workshop recognises our own needs for others when working with complexity, offering a place of restoration and development.
In this in person, 2 day, experiential workshop on the outskirts of Edinburgh (see location for further details) we will explore how we can work and move through complex emotions and states using active imagination and creative approaches, including narrative therapy, embodied practice, and clay to support transformation and healing.
This workshop brings the old and new together, blending Jungian (working at depth) and Reichian (body orientated) concepts with somatic trauma therapy, through the medium of creative methods. No prior knowledge of these ways of thinking is needed and I hope to be able to offer you new ways of thinking about, and working with, trauma and dissociation.
You are welcome to come as you are, investing in your own personal development. You are also invited to come with clients in mind, on a journey through ways of creating new opportunities for change.
This workshop is for both new and established counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and similar.
To register please follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pathways-to-transformation-tickets-1667724752629?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl
or contact me : 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. In an ever changing world many emerging therapists wonder "Where next?".
Training as a counsellor and psychotherapist takes significant investment, in time, money and emotions. In an ever changing world many emerging therapists wonder "Where next?".
Mentoring for Success in Professional and Private Practice
For counsellors and psychotherapists
Programme: Tier 1
• 1-hour x 1:1 online development meeting per month
• 1 community/peer meeting online every month to share practice and development (between 1-3 hours online)
Cost: £100 per month
Programme: Tier 2
• Includes everything in Tier 1
PLUS
• 6 x 2.5-hour bi-monthly online masterclasses covering key topics
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 (Online)
Tier 1 & Tier 2:
£115 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 am also a trainer, 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).
To support your development I have drawn together a programme that offers both bespoke 1:1 support with me, and also the opportunity to develop a supportive community of peers to support you as you develop your work (Tier 1).
Recognising the need for additional training Tier 2 offers a comprehensive CPD package which you can sign up to as a 12 month package of £300, or pay-as-you-go at £55 per Masterclass.
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!
All trainings comes with a CPD certificate issued after completion of each element.
Tier 2
Bi-monthly 2.5 hour Masterclass programme
First Saturday of the month (Oct, Dec, Feb, April, June, August)
1-4pm
Online
Month 1:
Business planning and marketing for success
Becoming a 'solopreneur' is not in the training!
As a counsellor finding ourselves 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, Safeguarding, domestic abuse (MARAC), self harm and suicide attention, onwards referrals, working in partnership with others. (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 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.
Tier 2 cost: £35 per workshop, or £180 (£30 per workshop) if purchased in advance.
Each Masterclass is 2.5 hours long and held on zoom.
Contact me, and let's see how we can work together!
07788910805 abigail@cumbriapsychotherapy.com
What's my background and why train 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 and came up against serious systemic injustice 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, establishing a Charity specialising in offering counselling and psychotherapy to children and families who had experienced sexual and domestic abuse.
I began to specialise in trauma specifically 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, 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 with complex histories of maltreatment and abuse.
From 2019 I had 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 and practically in ways I could not have imagined.
Portfolio working has offered me ways to remain connected with others and led me towards working in academia, 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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