"Steve has been an amazing support to me when i needed the most. Having just returned to work after having a baby i felt quite a bit of lost and very vulnerable. With his open, compassionate and supporting approach he has challenged me just the right way to understand better what's causing me feel in a particular way and what i can do about it. And all this is done with great care, attention and a very special sense of humour, that just makes the whole experience very human. Thank you, Steve!!"
"I have been having therapy with Steve for over two years and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend him. He has helped me with ongoing anxiety problems, traumatic events and life difficulties. I now understand myself and my relationships better and am more able to cope with personal challenges. Steve has a flexible and down to earth style. This really works for me and means I've never had problems with the 'power relationship' I have experienced in previous therapeutic relationships. He clearly knows his stuff and I feel that he is always using best practice and applying the most relevant techniques depending on how our therapy develops. It is often difficult to fit therapy into a hectic and demanding life but I always leave sessions feeling that it has been time well spent."
"I have worked with Steve in a therapeutic relationship for four years. Those years have been life-changing. It has helped me to acknowledge that the deep-seated shame I have lived with all my life, can, at last, come into the light and can be healed."
"Working through my difficulties in a positive, supportive and psychodynamic relationship with Steve has given me creative opportunities for personal growth that I could not have imagined. It has opened doors for me, and through Steve’s encouragement I have been able to explore other support systems, and I have discovered that I am not alone with my distress; and also that I have something valuable to offer others. Before working with Steve, I was highly distrustful of people or of any group situation. I would not have been able to trust people enough to access peer support. Now, I can do that because I have learnt to trust, with him."
"I have spent most of my adult life suppressing how I felt, terrified that any expression of myself or my own needs would horrify and appal others, and leave me on my own in a hostile universe. I had no sense of my own self. It is amazing to me that Steve accepted me, in those early days of our relationship, understood my need, and did not turn away from it. Steve is not afraid in himself to acknowledge the need and despair of others in a truly human way. He is secure in himself, and that is a secure base from which to work therapeutically with someone, who like me, did not have that in myself."
"It was a turning point to come into a therapeutic relationship that offered a sense of “containment” and holding. To feel, for once, that I was not being judged."
"I have heard it quoted, as a comment on therapy, that “the healing is in the relationship.” I believe this utterly. Without the chance of a different experience, of total acceptance, of continuity, I could not have come to where I am today. A “safe base” in a relationship with Steve as a therapist has been paramount in revisiting and reframing my experience of the past."
"I have really felt with Steve that it has been a collaborative journey together working towards new understandings and discoveries. That has opened up new possibilities, the dynamic of creating something meaningful from the trauma of the past. From the very beginning, Steve helped to engender hope. If the therapist is “internalised” - and we have worked towards that so that when the therapy ended I had something sustainable - then since finishing, I have carried on with the therapy, and it has not felt on my own."
"I carry on working towards things which empower me and give me a sense of pleasure; things which I can say are my own. I write creatively, mostly poetry, which I did not do before. Recently I was on local radio reading my poetry. I don’t think I could ever have done this before. Steve encouraged me to take up running, and though I am not doing this to the same extent that I used to, it remains something I can do for myself, another piece of the jigsaw as I work towards a way of sustaining wellbeing."
"Steve gives of himself, always, and I think people respond to that. His work is boundaried, but human. He is kind and always finds a way of working and relating that is appropriate to that person’s needs. I have spoken to other people he has helped, and I am not alone in believing him to be utterly caring, professional, skilled and insightful. I know he has helped people, and not just me. He is not afraid of using humour, of sharing our human condition and all that entails. He does not stand apart, but alongside. Support, encouragement and kindness really touch lives. I cannot say how much it means to be accepted as a person, with all my many faults, by another person. It has been a therapeutic relationship that has totally changed my outlook on life."
"I have joined peer support groups, I have started to live in a more open and honest relationship with my partner because of Steve’s input. My home life, with my four children is unrecognisable from when I first started to work with Steve. I have, since we finished working together, stepped out into voluntary work, and have recently been appointed to a paid part-time post. He gave me that confidence in myself. It has not all happened at once, but our therapeutic work and relationship has been foundational."
"I am very grateful that Steve and I had that time to work together. Without his understanding, without his humanity, and without his therapeutic skills, I would be in a very different place today. We worked with different approaches, and I still refer to some of the CAT “diagrams” even now. I remember things he said, I remember his way of accepting and of treating me with real care and compassion. I am able now to think of that experience and maybe offer myself the same kind of compassion, from within me. I have not done justice to what the therapy with Steve has given me – but I have no hesitation in saying that it has changed my life for the better, and I am more than happy to speak to that gift wherever I can."