I am a psychologist, hiker, traveller and creative.
I’ve been helping people overcome mental health stuck-ness, for all my life, it seems. I’ve not been a stranger to adversity in my childhood, growing up in Eastern Europe, with a mixed cultural heritage. I remember first discovering psychology in high school: the rather gloomy basement classroom, the bohemian personality of my Psychology teacher, and thinking: this is it! I started off with a deep curiosity to understand the human mind, my own mind and a strong drive to help people out of suffering. It’s been about 24 years since then and a lot has changed but curiosity and care for others are my engine still.
From my first job, supporting children with learning difficulties to vulnerable young people, poor gypsy communities and victims of crime, in Romania, to homeless young people, victims of domestic abuse and working with prisoners in the U.K., it seems I’ve travelled a wide landscape of trauma and mental health suffering and expanded so much through it.
Exploring is definitely my most natural way of being and after holding suffering for so long I inevitably wondered what comes after? My curiosity shifted to wanting to see life more fully, with its entire spectrum of colours. I ‘met’ positive psychology and coaching and these, coupled my innate philosophical nature, have expanded me into growth, thriving, happiness, a wider existential growth and the creative, existential forces which drive our becoming in the world. I particularly explored growth after adversity and trauma in my research on posttraumatic growth through nature. The greenspace psychologist was born as I understood more deeply what nature’s space can be: a restorative, healing space which enables us to keep exploring, healing and growing as beings part of the Earth. I strongly believe that nature’s restorative space is essential for preventing and healing from mental distress but also essential for our thriving as individuals and as a race.
I believe that if we ask the big questions, if we bravely explore life’s paradoxes and how we are in the world, we can engage with life more honestly and thus imagine and create more meaningful, life affirming realities for ourselves and the world we are part of.
Qualifications: BSc in Psychology MBPsS, MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology, Existential coaching training. Member of the British Psychological Society, member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, the Climate Coaching Alliance, member of the British Mountaineering Council. Guided by the Code of ethics and conduct of the British Psychological Society and by the Global code of ethics of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. I am an EMCC accredited coach.
Aboutbeinghuman We We are all made up of dreams Droplets of dreams, Dreams and shadows Drops of light on passing green leaves flickering relentlessly. We are all made up of the same stuff: Light and shadow Beauty and dust Freedom and entropy. We We are all made up of freedom But then forget to fly Living to be swooned and swayed By delusions of cloud nine. All afraid to live We learn to walk these shaky grounds We plunge deep in aching darkness And soar high in timeless silence. We We are all made up of beauty Streaks of light Playing Playing with the stars Playing with pain, love, truth And courage. All the same We’re flakes of brightness Burning, yearning, craving To enkindle the northern lights! We're ghosts forging meaning out of dust We are humans. clara
The Greenspace Psychologist 