Where I’ve worked

Alongside seeing clients privately at Laura Simmonds Therapy, I work part time for Solace Women’s Aid, where I provide therapy to people who have experienced domestic or sexual violence. I currently work with clients across London as well as the Tonbridge, Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells areas.

I’ve previously worked for Tonbridge Counselling Service as well as Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers, a tiny but fantastic organisation that provides much needed support to refugees and asylum seekers across South East London.  At both, I provided counselling for clients from a wide range of background who were struggling with depression, anxiety, grief, PTSD and childhood trauma.

Training and Qualifications

I began my counselling career in 2013 and qualified with a Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling in 2017, awarded by CPCAB. Since then, I’ve completed further training in:

- Online and Telephone Counselling (Counselling Tutor, 2020)

- Third Wave Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) including mindfulness, Compassion Focused Therapy, Dialectic Behavioural Therapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (British Psychological Society, 2018)

- Working Somatically with Trauma and Herman’s 3-Stages of Trauma Recovery (Paula Biles, 2018)

Outside of therapy 

I trained as a counsellor after my own experience of seeing a therapist. I began the journey of counselling thinking ‘How on earth can this help me?’ But, over time, it became a life-giving and healing experience – an experience I’m passionate about offering to others.

Before training as a counsellor, I spent ten years working in the charity sector, mostly for anti-human trafficking organisations. It was here that I learned living with unresolved trauma is like going through life with our hands tied behind our backs. Counselling can be a really important way of resolving trauma and caring for our mental wellbeing.

Outside of work, I love walking my dog, spending time with friends and family, reading graphic novels, doing yoga, and searching for the perfect brownie (the unicorn of the cake world).