David is a freelance psychotherapeutic counsellor based in the East
Midlands.

The Eden Practice, instigated in 2015, was born of need – and compassion,
realising the scant provision for consideration of personal narrative, and the
importance of lived experience. In direct apposition to the current regimen of
pathologising psychological trauma, and the prominence of indorsing emotional
dis-ease as illness. David aspires to the promotion of, engaged listening – and
hearing, empathic understanding, compassion, and support, rather than the
categorisation of emotional response to adverse experiences, and the medicating
of supposed disorders.

David is concerned that the current provision of NHS Talking Therapies –
formerly IAPT, and the reliance upon manualised cognitive behavioural therapy,
and the absence of choice, is entirely inadequate.

David’s conventional training, MA* Trauma Informed Practice; BA*
Humanistic Counselling Practice – has been fundamental to his practice as a
therapist. “I believe that the basic tenets of Rogerian person-centred practices,
and that the therapeutic relationship are essential. However, my own life
experience has been equally as informative”.