Christian Howes

My first professional encounter with mental health was when I trained as a Psychiatric Nurse in the early 2000s. I worked accross forensic, neuropsychiatric, and generic mental health settings and gained experience and understanding of severe and complex psychiatric disturbance. As a nurse I also learned how to implement psychological interventions such as Cognitive behavioural Therapy CBT , and Solution Focussed Therapy.   In 2012 I completed an MSc in Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Mental health. This helped me understand how to help people, therapeutically, who had been given the diagnosis of Personality Disorder, or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD .    By the mid 2010s I began training as an Attachment based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, where I learned that mental health problems aren't always because of significant trauma, but can be due to significant losses, and insufficient care and containment from key attachment figures.  I now work solely as an Attachment Based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist in private practice. Over the course of my career I have emphasised a therapeutic, psychological, and analytical approach to working with emotional and psychiatric difficulty. I work in an attentive and containing way, developing trust from which to cultivate emotional health and self discovery. I apply continuous observation of the attachment model, helping clients to understand the impact of ruptures and losses concerning significant attachment figures, and how these experiences have influenced negative attachment patterns.  I can also work in a short term, goal focussed, manner if this is more suitable to the client or is necessary from an economical standpoint. If short term work is indicated I employ principles of the cognitive behavioural and solution focussed approaches, however I will always acknowledge the impact of trauma, and attempt to help a client to respect and tolerate the intensity of triggers and flashbacks. I believe it is important for the therapist to establish meaningful attunement to the client's needs, so that they may start to feel grounded, less anxious, and contained. It is here, I feel, the client can begin to learn a language for their emotions, and deeper explanations for their actions.