My own therapy adventure kind of happened by accident. I graduated from drama school in 2002. Therefore I was used to both facilitating and attending workshops where you have to get up and ‘do stuff’. So just after leaving I participated in a personal development workshop to build confidence for attending auditions. It blew me away, gave me so much more than I’d hoped for and turned me into a personal development junkie.

However, in 2004 I was feeling a lack of direction and didn’t know what to do. An acting career is rarely linear! A trusted friend recommended therapy. I wasn’t sure this was for me, but I needed a change so agreed.

I remember knocking on the door of the building for the first session and it taking ages for them to answer the door. Everything inside me was kicking and screaming to bolt, because what if someone saw me! ME, KIM going for therapy. My pride was hurting! I laugh when I think about that now, as asking for support is such a human thing to do. 

In hindsight, for that specific problem a coach may have been more appropriate. But the depth of knowledge I gained about myself and the swirling depths of my psyche and emotions was well worth the ride. I began to understand my feelings and behaviours much more and developed both compassion and a different perspective for myself and who I was in my relationships.

Just because we’ve had therapy life’s obstacles don’t stop and in the late noughties something else hit me hard.

Which landed me right back in another workshop in 2009. Though this weekend programme worked on a much deeper level than the previous ones. It started to join up the dots for me in a profound way. The visceral shift inside me was so mesmerising I barely slept for six months afterwards. I wasn’t tired, wired or manic. I was awake. Life felt exciting again and in the summers that followed I took myself on adventures to Canada to do longer workshops. I did mention that I was addicted to them right? It was after the last one that I decided to become a therapist. 

I trained for a further three years and as well as learning ‘how to do it’, the people on my training course became friends for life.

The course put me through my paces. Sometimes experiencing really intense emotions, as I shed more layers (I thought I was ‘fixed’ after the workshops) but the self-discovery just kept coming. As did the tears, the laughter and the revelations. I loved every moment of it.

However, devastatingly in that weird way that life works, literally weeks before end of my training my mum unexpectedly became terminally ill and passed away days after my graduation ceremony.  Somehow, I managed to get through it with the abundance of love I allowed myself to receive from my classmates, teachers, friends and family. There are no words to describe the sadness of losing my mum, and trying to would be futile. But what I can honestly say is that amidst my sobs I was able to see the beauty of what our relationship had afforded me. I was also blessed with the consciousness that it’s not only life that is sacred, that death can be too. 

Rewinding a few years. As soon as I left school I trained to be a hair stylist. There was always music and fascinating people sweeping through our crazy and cultured salon. As well as learning my craft I discovered so much about life. From the volatile boss, who one minute would have us crying and cowering in a corner from his wrath, to the next where we could barely stand up straight because he’d made us laugh so hard. There was always a drama. We never stopped working and had gazillions of clients. Even as a junior, they would share so many secrets and stories with me at the backwash or as I stood winding hundreds of perm rods for their spiral perm. That was pretty high tech at the time.  I’ve always been a chatterbox but I loved to listen to them too and make them a cuppa. It was always about three main things for me. The people, getting to know them and making them feel good in their appearance. The creativity, it was a time when anything went, so I got to experiment with all kinds of hair and practice my craft. And the sense of community- there were always so many people around to have fun with and experience the dark days with too. A real stomping ground or life.



I worked in prestigious salons in south and central Manchester for years and later became a hairdressing NVQ trainer and assessor in colleges and the workplace. I still have some clients (I missed them during the lockdowns and judging by their hair they missed me too)), but I practice my scissor therapy and chatting over a brew skills in the comfort of their own homes these days.

At one stage I couldn’t decide if I should extend into personal styling. I always loved fashion and experimenting with clothes and if I could offer this to others too it would be a fab and fun thing to do. Or should I get my own salon instead? Or something else? I had loved drama at school, but wasn’t allowed to do it as a subject as it wasn’t ‘for a girl like me’. That’s another story for a later date blog! But that’s what I did. Studied drama for six years, a two year foundation course followed by a four year degree at drama school.

As well as what you would expect an actor to learn, I spent my honours year researching drama workshops for therapeutic purposes and volunteered in projects at a women’s bail hostel, an addiction recovery centre, where I devised and delivered an art in recovery programme and  created drama workshops for teenagers in Switzerland. The latter was based in forum theatre where participants got to empower themselves by recreating the outcome of an event. In therapy circles this would be considered very similar to psychodrama, but I didn’t know that then. I just knew I wanted more of it. Which brings me full circle to how I became a workshop devotee and psychotherapist.

Woven through all of this life was carrying on, romantic and not so romantic relationships, friendships, travel, successes and failures, fun, dancing, dark days and down time just to simply rest and rejuvenate.

I eventually became a personal stylist. Though having benefitted from  my own emotional growth, I chose to offer this to clients too, as well as looking at their external appearance. So became a style coach instead, which also addresses our internal image and how we want to present ourselves in the world as we embark our different chapters of life.

As well as being a therapist, I still act and was recently cast in a festival for new writing. It was really exciting to have that script back in my hand and was great to be back in the theatre, especially after lockdown!

Have a wonderful day folks and if you’re feeling that you can’t have that right now I’d be happy to listen and help you to navigate your way through.

Warmest Wishes to All

Kim