About me

Professional experience

I am an accredited humanistic psychotherapist with thousands of hours of clinical experience over the course of more than a decade. I work with adults on an individual basis and in a men’s therapy group in North and Central London. My training was a rich experiential process of learning and growth at Spectrum, a London-based humanistic psychotherapy centre. Since starting my practice, I have continued to deepen my work in ongoing professional groups and through continuing professional development. I use a range of approaches, including Gestalt, Transactional Analysis and Stanley Keleman’s somatic emotional approach, Formative Psychology®. Read more about how I work.

I’ve worked in the statutory and voluntary sectors in health and social care settings, community development, communications and consultation. This has included working with older people, people who have had strokes and people with HIV/AIDS. I originally went to art college and, before becoming a full-time therapist, worked with disabled art and design students and those affected by mental health problems. As part of my training I worked as a volunteer at the West London Centre for Counselling, a free service for Hammersmith and Fulham residents.

I have individual therapy, and regular individual and group supervision with UKCP-accredited supervisors: in these settings and relationships I engage in my own personal and professional process, to support me in my work as a therapist.

I am an accredited member of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS), one of the main accrediting professional bodies in the UK. This means I have gone through a rigorous process to meet its higher standards as a competent, ethical and independent practitioner. I hold professional indemnity insurance.

 

My training

I have completed six years’ core psychotherapy training, including the following courses:

  • Oxford Cambridge and RSA Certificate in Counselling Skills
  • Spectrum Certificate in Counselling and Psychotherapy
  • Spectrum One Year Course in Psychotherapy
  • Spectrum Post-Graduate Course in Psychotherapy
  • Basic, Intermediate, & Advanced Sexuality
  • Childhood Sexual Abuse – Occurrence and Prevention
  • Reparenting Intensive
  • Developing Clinical Skills

 

My interests as a psychotherapist

I’m interested in how we evolve, come alive and influence our own experience over the course of our lives. I am curious to know how someone relates both to themselves and to others. I particularly love working with Stanley Keleman’s Formative Psychology® as a way of growing new possibilities for ourselves: for me, it’s a rich, profound philosophy and practice that can enable us to directly influence our experience and direction throughout the course of our life.

A key interest for me is how we can manage and appreciate difference in relationship. This could be difference of culture, perspectives, gender, for example. It also includes difference in our constitutional type, how we function, our pace or timing, or our day-to-day needs, wishes and expectations, whether spoken or unspoken. It can also include difference in how we like to give and receive love and how we communicate.

While I work with people of all genders, I happen to work a lot with men. Drawing upon my personal and professional experience, I understand the factors, challenges and complexities involved in living our lives as men at this time, whatever our stage of life, background, sexuality or current situation.

I am aware that psychotherapy doesn’t operate in a vacuum and I hold in my awareness issues of power, whether personal, relational, social and political.

Experiences, issues and people I work with include:

  • Abuse and neglect
  • Addiction
  • Anger and rage
  • Anxiety, worry and panic
  • Boundaries, with ourselves and others
  • Childhood sexual abuse
  • Climate anxiety
  • Co-dependency and being overly-responsible for others
  • Commitment
  • Depression
  • End of life and death
  • Grief, loss and bereavement
  • Managing illness or disability
  • Men and our emotional life
  • Money
  • Relationships with ourselves and others
  • Self-worth and self-esteem
  • Sexuality and gender identity
  • Shame, embarrassment, humiliation and guilt
  • Spirituality, meaning and existential dilemmas
  • Stages of life
  • Feeling stuck
  • Transitions and change
  • Trauma and shock
  • Work, stress and burn-out

 

Personal experience

I’m a gay man of mixed Caribbean and British heritage who grew up in London, now in my fifties. I’m aware of the broader, increasingly turbulent, unstable context in which we are all living our lives: the climate and ecological emergencies, the impacts of Covid-19, the increasing pace and influence of technology, increasing social and economic divisions and polarisation.

I know what it’s like to experience loss and grief having had someone close to me die. I’ve had to face my own vulnerability and mortality through the experience of a violent, traumatic attack. My experience is that engaging in therapy is a key way in which we can deal with and integrate often painful, life-changing experiences.

I have been drawn to working as a therapist through my own experience of psychotherapy, and bring with me a breadth and depth of life experience.

If you’re interested in working with me please email me to check my availability. I treat all contact between us as confidential from the start.

07718 988733
rob@robfrancis.net