Co-Tutor Diploma in Clinical Sexology and Relationship Therapy
Ryan has always followed a path of wanting to understand and support people as best as he could and informed by life experiences in both Portugal and the USA, he decided to enrol in a Joint Honours Degree in Politics and Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow in 2006. There, he studied Human Rights, International Development, Nationalism, Politics of Latin America, Postmodern Performance, Queer & Feminist Theory in Performance, Autobiography in Performance, Post-Colonial Theatre, and Scottish Theatre. But it was alongside this degree that the seeds for a future career as a psychotherapist would be planted.
Working at LGBT Youth Scotland to develop a project for the International Day Against Homophobia, Ryan also started working with groups of young people to create pieces of Forum Theatre (a type of socio-political theatre involving audience participation) which reflected their lived experiences as young LGBT people in Scotland. These pieces of theatre were performed and presented at conferences and events across Glasgow and Edinburgh between 2007-2010.
Informed by these experiences, Ryan pursued a MA in Dramatherapy at the University of Roehampton which was completed in 2015. His therapeutic work focused on supporting people with addiction and substance misuse challenges within community settings, as well as people living with HIV, particularly gay men. During these years, his work revolved around delivering individual and group therapy sessions, as well as conducting research on intimacy in interpersonal relationships of gay men living with HIV. This work was presented at conferences and published in the Dramatherapy Journal in 2018, as part of that journal’s first special edition focusing on sexual and gender identities, of which he was also a co-editor.
He was a Visiting Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and University of Derby on the subjects of addiction and LGBT-affirmative therapy between 2017-2020.
As a Dramatherapist, Ryan was an active member of The British Association of Dramatherapists, where he held the role of member and Convener of that association’s Inclusion & Visibility Subcommittee. Under his leadership, the subcommittee took on a more radical and proactive approach to exploring and effecting change around challenges surrounding identity in the profession, mainly those involving disabilities, global majorities, and gender identity and sexual orientation. Ryan was the association’s representative at the national level Coalition Against Conversion Therapy until 2022.
Ryan also worked at Place2Be between 2018-2022, leading and managing a therapeutic service in a south London primary school, where he worked pluralistically to support children, families, and staff wellbeing. This marked a profound shift in understanding and insight of mental health difficulties at different stages of life, and was the final piece of the puzzle of what he would study and focus on next.
Throughout his clinical career, Ryan was drawn to challenges around shame, sex, communication, and relationships, and this led to his training in Psychosexual & Relationships Therapy at the Centre for Psychosexual Health between 2021-2023. An additional aspect of Ryan’s professional career has been the consistent creation and delivery of workshops and training surrounding mental health in different contexts, as well as public speaking in conferences and other events.
Ryan maintains a busy private practice focusing on psychosexual and relationships therapy within the queer community in central London.
He is honoured to be a Co-Tutor at CICS.
