Co-Tutor for Certificate in Intimate Partner Therapy
Stephanie graduated from Goldsmiths College, University of London, with a music degree in 1999 and followed this with a 3-year City & Guilds qualification in Woodwind & Brass Instrument Making and Repair. She taught and repaired woodwinds part time while working as a student support worker for several years in universities and further education colleges across London.
It was while doing this work that Stephanie realised that her real strength lay in listening and offering emotional support. She therefore began her MSc in Therapeutic Counselling at the University of Greenwich in 2007 – an integrative training which combined psychodynamic, person centred and cognitive behavioural approaches. She qualified as a counsellor with a Post Graduate Diploma in 2009 and converted this to an MSc in 2011.
Her first counselling job was at the charity GamCare, which supports addicted gamblers and their loved ones. She also worked as a therapist for students at Trinity College of Music; for children aged 5 to 11 in primary schools across Bromley; and for staff and students at her alma mater, Goldsmiths, as well as beginning work in private practice.
In 2014, she went on to complete a Diploma in Integrative Supervision at the Minster Centre, beginning by supervising groups of student counsellors at a bereavement service.
Stephanie earned BACP Senior Accreditation in 2017 and in the same year, began a 3-year post-graduate diploma in psychodynamic couple’s psychotherapy at Tavistock Relationships.
While doing this training, she began her teaching career on the Counselling BSc at Newham University Centre, and then as Primary Tutor on the Humanistic Counselling BA at the Metanoia Institute.
In 2022 she had her first introduction to CICS as a student on the Diploma in Clinical Sexology and Relationship Therapy, from which she graduated in July 2024. She taught the module on Christianity and Sexuality while a student on the course, and was delighted to then be asked to teach on the Certificate in Intimate Partner Therapy. CICS feels like home to Stephanie because its guiding principles of inclusivity, relational warmth and uncompromising quality, align with her own beliefs about what should be at the heart of therapy and the teaching of it.
Alongside teaching at CICS, Stephanie trains and supervises NHS therapists in the Couples Therapy for Depression programme; is a visiting tutor at Metanoia; and a Live Assessor at the Minster Centre. She is currently a member of the BACP Expert Reference Group for relationship counselling – a group that seeks to maintain standards of excellence for relationship therapists.
Stephanie regularly writes on the subject of therapy, mental health, and in particular how relationships are portrayed in film and television. She has been published in Therapy Today, The Huffington Post, The Mighty and The Journal of Couple & Family Psychoanalysis.
To balance out her therapy and teaching work, Stephanie is still a very active musician, and occasionally restores or repairs the odd woodwind instrument.
