More about Neil
However, as a young working-class, queer femme human, the world projected its misogyny, homophobia and transphobia onto and into me. Part of my life’s journey has been to vomit up this disowned hatred and to nurture who I am with the support of therapy, queer love, culture, friendship and rest.
Coming into individual and group therapy in my early thirties supported me to know who I am and wanted to be. I trained to be an Integrative Arts Therapist at the Institute of Arts and Therapy in Education (IATE) and since 2018, I have built a thriving private practice working with a diverse group of people, especially in terms of gender, race, class, sexuality and neurodiversity. I enjoy holding space/being with people as they sit with past and present feelings and experiences, with the possibility of expression, acceptance and change.
Over the past decade, I have really taken to being an educator – sharing what I have learned and mixing this with the expertise of people who come to my workshops and seeing where we end up together. I have taught, tutored and assessed for various therapy trainings – including IATE, Re-Vision, The Minster Centre, CCPE, Terapia and Iron Mill College - and worked as a consultant supporting staff and therapists at these organisations as well as Aashna, Kooth and various university counselling teams.
My teaching interests include gender and sexuality within a broader intersectional, social justice orientated framework – meeting people as they are and creating open, safe spaces that encourage curious exploration, increase understanding and allow for necessary, direct challenge to individual and systematic prejudice, within ourselves and others. I aspire to working from a consciously anti-racist, class-aware position that embraces the diverse reality of difference, including age, disability, neurodiversity, religion/belief and body size/shape. I also love dance/movement as a means of connecting to ourselves and others.
In 2022 I co-wrote a chapter on queer children – ‘Don’t panic: Queering the child’ – as part of the ground-breaking Queering Psychotherapy book.
I am passionate about the need for more trans, non-binary and gender diverse folk – and our cisgender allies – to train as therapists, especially as we are living in a time of violent, scapegoating transphobia, we need to hold onto and amplify ancestral, present and future trans joy, hope and wisdom. If this calls to you, then come to an introductory workshop at HOMA.