KATIE
ADHD COUNSELLOR
ADHD & DYSLEXIA COACH
ADDICTION THERAPIST
PARENTING SUPPORT
BEREAVEMENT & LOSS SPECIALIST
DIAGNOSED COMBINED ADHD
LOCATION ~ PL14
Katie grew up knowing she was different but didn’t know why. She always felt overwhelmed emotionally and angry. She used cannabis as a teenager to cope with her strong feelings and emotions. She felt it calmed her down and made her more able to manage her life. Katie then experienced an eating disorder when she developed Anorexia at the age of 13.
Katie was passionate about horses from 9 years of age and has been all her life. She found caring for them as a child gave her the much needed structure her life needed. She could lose herself in mucking out, grooming and riding. She particularly loved working with the rescue animals – an early sign of the extra compassion ADHD brings.
Katie was only diagnosed with Dyslexia in her early 40’s as an adult so had spent her entire school life thinking she must be thick! She felt very isolated, socially inadequate and self-critical of her own appearance and was constantly worrying about what others thought of her. This went on all throughout her teens.
Katie’s school reports were littered with comments from teachers of ‘poor concentration and focus’ and ‘not enough attendance’! Katie couldn’t cope with school so instead turned to recreational drug use, developed an eating disorder, had anxiety, low self-esteem and depression. All of this she now attributes to her then undiagnosed ADHD.
When the Dyslexia diagnosis came it was a massive breakthrough for Katie but it has made her frustrated and angry at the lack of awareness in schools, which exists to this day. It has given her huge empathy to work with clients who have this often undiagnosed ADHD comorbidity.
After school Katie found herself training to be a hairdresser as she had no qualifications and it seemed like one of her only options. She finished her hairdressing apprenticeship much to her surprise as she had a reputation for not finishing anything. But Katie loved the ‘working with people’ element so much she kept hairdressing up for over 12 years.
After her own recovery, in 2010 Katie followed her passion to help marginalised people by training to be an Addiction Counsellor, with a charitable organisation in Plymouth. She found her vocation working with clients struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, eating disorders, gambling and co-dependent relationships. She learnt so much working alongside other mental health professionals including Psychiatrists, Social Workers, GP’s and Probation Officers. She became involved with group work and facilitated Relapse Prevention, Behavioural Triggers, Anger Management and Health & Nutrition groups. She saw first hand the crippling effects of addiction and the utter chaos it brings into people’s lives and families. Especially where undiagnosed ADHD is the cause.
More recently Katie has been working with teenagers aged 16 to 18 at a local college as a trainee and then a voluntary counsellor. This is an age group she cares hugely about and identifies with their struggles, having had so many of her own. She has helped numerous teens with a wide range of mental health issues including anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, addictions, undiagnosed ADHD, Autism and many with additional special learning needs.
Katie is mum to 3 neuro diverse children and is more than keen to help all parents of ND children, but particularly those who are dealing with Inattentive ADHD, ASD, dyspraxia and dyslexia.
Katie has also undertaken training to be a Grief Counsellor. She trained and worked with Cruse the national bereavement specialists. She now has three years bereavement counselling experience with clients aged between 18 and 70.
Katie also has a real understanding of clients who are living with chronic illness. Especially those who are managing ADHD alongside it.
Another of Katie’s passions is playing the violin. She feels that music has given her an escape from her compulsive thoughts and overthinking brain. The music she finds soothing and it allows her to focus especially when she is feeling overwhelmed in life due to her ADHD.
Katie is now passionate about working with ADHD clients. Having suffered with a lack of motivation, impulsivity, compulsivity, procrastination, overwhelm and various bouts of anxiety and depression over the years, she really understands how ADHD can impact on clients. She is committed to helping clients navigate their way through the ADHD traits to lead a happier and fulfilling life.
Katie enjoys helping clients fully understand the condition and to be able to recognise their triggers. She firmly believes that gaining knowledge and tools to manage their individual ADHD traits is the way to personal fulfilment.
Qualifications
- Counselling Skills Level 2 2011
- Drug & Alcohol Awareness Level 2 2011
- Advanced Practitioner in Substance Misuse Level 3 2011
- Cruse Bereavement Counselling Levels 1 & 2 2020
- Childhood Loss & Grief Levels 1 & 2 2020
- Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling Level 4 2021
- Bereavement Support Foundation Level 2 2021
- Life Coaching – Distinction Level 3 2021
- Person Centred Psychotherapy Level 5 2022
- Diploma in Psychotherapeutic Counselling Level 5 2023
See what Katies’s previous clients have said …
I’ve been having sessions with Katie over the last few months after a fairly recent ADHD diagnosis aged 28 last year.
I am so glad I was matched with Katie as my therapist as she is empathic, engaging and has helped me massively understand and manage my ADHD brain.
Her experience, knowledge and lived experience of ADHD allows her to really understand any issue I’ve presented her and she has really helped me reframe how I think.
Things I’ve massively struggled with are catastrophising situations, feeling overwhelmed and shutting off from relationships. Katie has allowed me to explore how this is connected to my ADHD and explained why I am feeling this way from an ADHD perspective. Katie then helps me implement new ways of dealing with my thoughts and feelings.
She’s been amazing so far and I’m looking forward to continuing sessions with her as I’ve no doubt she will help me get better at the areas I want to improve in my work and relationships. I definitely feel in a more grounded and stable place right now thanks to sessions with Katie.
I would just like to say a huge thank you to Headstuff but most importantly to Katie. After being diagnosed with combined ADHD last year and before seeking therapy, I was at a loss with what to do and had been crippled by anxiety and fear because of uncertainty, especially when I was transitioning into another job. But over the past few months, Katie has been amazing and helped me manage my behaviours and traits and counselled me through my past experiences.
It’s been easy to open up to Katie about all aspects of my life and I’ve felt she has been able to truly understand my thoughts and feelings. She has given me brilliant tools and strategies to use which I have put in place to help with daily tasks including how to handle personal relationships and with easing my negativity.
For the first time I know I am in a much better place with my life and I finally realise my abilities and love my new found confidence. I couldn’t have done this without her help and I am so grateful for her patience, kindness and professional help during my sessions.
I would highly recommend Katie to anyone who is seeking help with managing their ADHD – 10/10.
Katie. I want to thank you for the incredible support and guidance you’ve given me so far during our sessions. You’ve taken me from being a virtual recluse, to being back at work and feeling confident about the future. You continue to give great advice regarding my struggle with alcohol and I’ve found your capacity to openly discuss your own life experiences very helpful. I feel I can now move forward with some confidence. Looking forward to our remaining sessions.
I just wanted to say what a wonderful support and help Katie has been to me and my husband and our youngest daughter.
Since our eldest daughter was diagnosed with ADHD and ASD in October and for some time before that life has been pretty tough in our household.
Katie has been brilliant at offering strategies to help us help our eldest child and to help ourselves when challenging situations arise.
Our weekly sessions allow us to talk through events that have happened and how we could better manage them so that we all feel our household has become a less explosive and stressful place to be.
Katie has separate sessions with our youngest daughter who has struggled with the arguments and consequences of our situation and she has really helped her to understand why her sister can’t always help the way she behaves and ways to be at peace with her own emotions.
I can’t recommend Katie highly enough, she is just brilliant.
In the small amount of time I’ve been having therapy, Katie has been nothing short of miraculous in the way in which she has heard, understood and helped me to respond to my inner conflicts.
Katie has really helped me confront my demons and address the ghosts and skeletons in the closet.
Initially, I was only fumbling around in the dark, feeling my way all the time, skating on thin ice attempting to get through each day in the same negative repeated patterns with the same repeated outcomes.
What Katie has taught me is that I’m someone who is destined and fated by nature to go down into the dungeons, fight the dragon and find the gold.
Katie has allowed me to work out what the hell has been going on, to help me to move away from the dark thoughts, to appreciate and understood who I am and who I can become.
In getting a better understanding of myself and how I respond to the world around me, it’s almost like I’ve gained a superpower; the light bulb moments, the way in which a situation reveals itself differently based on how Katie has taught me to respond.
I’d always been extremely sceptical about any kind of therapy, but Katie’s natural gift and ability to listen, understand and break down everything into easily digestible segments has allowed me to appreciate that I am only human! I am kinder to myself now. I am far less worried and anxious about the external and I fully appreciate that I am part of this world.
Katie is a wonderful therapist and the work we’ve done to help me to see the light more clearly will no doubt be the foundation for how I live the rest of my life. Thank you, Katie!
I’ve had eight sessions with Katie and found them to be very helpful and insightful. Katie very skilfully and naturally helps you to open up and have so many epiphanies regarding yourself and your behaviour. Katie’s understanding of my dialogue was excellent as was her empathy. I find Katie’s assessment of my circumstances, insight and advice absolutely invaluable.
I’ve had a fair amount of counselling over the years. I knew I needed it but didn’t really want to attend. Generally dreading each session and having to build myself up to them.
I never felt that way with Headstuff’s Katie, I really enjoyed our sessions and the bits that were painful were worth the pain!
Katie is engaging, sympathetic, relatable and friendly. It made such a difference having a counsellor who also has lived experience of ADHD. She gave me some great ideas, food for thought and I felt supported at a time when I really, really needed it.
KATIE
ADHD COUNSELLOR
ADHD & DYSLEXIA COACH
ADDICTION THERAPIST
PARENTING SUPPORT
BEREAVEMENT & LOSS SPECIALIST
DIAGNOSED COMBINED ADHD
LOCATION ~ PL14
Katie grew up knowing she was different but didn’t know why. She always felt overwhelmed emotionally and angry. She used cannabis as a teenager to cope with her strong feelings and emotions. She felt it calmed her down and made her more able to manage her life. Katie then experienced an eating disorder when she developed Anorexia at the age of 13.
Katie was passionate about horses from 9 years of age and has been all her life. She found caring for them as a child gave her the much needed structure her life needed. She could lose herself in mucking out, grooming and riding. She particularly loved working with the rescue animals – an early sign of the extra compassion ADHD brings.
Katie was only diagnosed with Dyslexia in her early 40’s as an adult so had spent her entire school life thinking she must be thick! She felt very isolated, socially inadequate and self-critical of her own appearance and was constantly worrying about what others thought of her. This went on all throughout her teens.
Katie’s school reports were littered with comments from teachers of ‘poor concentration and focus’ and ‘not enough attendance’! Katie couldn’t cope with school so instead turned to recreational drug use, developed an eating disorder, had anxiety, low self-esteem and depression. All of this she now attributes to her then undiagnosed ADHD.
When the Dyslexia diagnosis came it was a massive breakthrough for Katie but it has made her frustrated and angry at the lack of awareness in schools, which exists to this day. It has given her huge empathy to work with clients who have this often undiagnosed ADHD comorbidity.
After school Katie found herself training to be a hairdresser as she had no qualifications and it seemed like one of her only options. She finished her hairdressing apprenticeship much to her surprise as she had a reputation for not finishing anything. But Katie loved the ‘working with people’ element so much she kept hairdressing up for over 12 years.
After her own recovery, in 2010 Katie followed her passion to help marginalised people by training to be an Addiction Counsellor, with a charitable organisation in Plymouth. She found her vocation working with clients struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, eating disorders, gambling and co-dependent relationships. She learnt so much working alongside other mental health professionals including Psychiatrists, Social Workers, GP’s and Probation Officers. She became involved with group work and facilitated Relapse Prevention, Behavioural Triggers, Anger Management and Health & Nutrition groups. She saw first hand the crippling effects of addiction and the utter chaos it brings into people’s lives and families. Especially where undiagnosed ADHD is the cause.
More recently Katie has been working with teenagers aged 16 to 18 at a local college as a trainee and then a voluntary counsellor. This is an age group she cares hugely about and identifies with their struggles, having had so many of her own. She has helped numerous teens with a wide range of mental health issues including anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, addictions, undiagnosed ADHD, Autism and many with additional special learning needs.
Katie is mum to 3 neuro diverse children and is more than keen to help all parents of ND children, but particularly those who are dealing with Inattentive ADHD, ASD, dyspraxia and dyslexia.
Katie has also undertaken training to be a Grief Counsellor. She trained and worked with Cruse the national bereavement specialists. She now has three years bereavement counselling experience with clients aged between 18 and 70.
Katie also has a real understanding of clients who are living with chronic illness. Especially those who are managing ADHD alongside it.
Another of Katie’s passions is playing the violin. She feels that music has given her an escape from her compulsive thoughts and overthinking brain. The music she finds soothing and it allows her to focus especially when she is feeling overwhelmed in life due to her ADHD.
Katie is now passionate about working with ADHD clients. Having suffered with a lack of motivation, impulsivity, compulsivity, procrastination, overwhelm and various bouts of anxiety and depression over the years, she really understands how ADHD can impact on clients. She is committed to helping clients navigate their way through the ADHD traits to lead a happier and fulfilling life.
Katie enjoys helping clients fully understand the condition and to be able to recognise their triggers. She firmly believes that gaining knowledge and tools to manage their individual ADHD traits is the way to personal fulfilment.
Qualifications
- Counselling Skills Level 2 2011
- Drug & Alcohol Awareness Level 2 2011
- Advanced Practitioner in Substance Misuse Level 3 2011
- Cruse Bereavement Counselling Levels 1 & 2 2020
- Childhood Loss & Grief Levels 1 & 2 2020
- Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling Level 4 2021
- Bereavement Support Foundation Level 2 2021
- Life Coaching – Distinction Level 3 2021
- Person Centred Psychotherapy Level 5 2022
- Diploma in Psychotherapeutic Counselling Level 5 2023
See what Katies’s previous clients have said …
I’ve been having sessions with Katie over the last few months after a fairly recent ADHD diagnosis aged 28 last year.
I am so glad I was matched with Katie as my therapist as she is empathic, engaging and has helped me massively understand and manage my ADHD brain.
Her experience, knowledge and lived experience of ADHD allows her to really understand any issue I’ve presented her and she has really helped me reframe how I think.
Things I’ve massively struggled with are catastrophising situations, feeling overwhelmed and shutting off from relationships. Katie has allowed me to explore how this is connected to my ADHD and explained why I am feeling this way from an ADHD perspective. Katie then helps me implement new ways of dealing with my thoughts and feelings.
She’s been amazing so far and I’m looking forward to continuing sessions with her as I’ve no doubt she will help me get better at the areas I want to improve in my work and relationships. I definitely feel in a more grounded and stable place right now thanks to sessions with Katie.
I would just like to say a huge thank you to Headstuff but most importantly to Katie. After being diagnosed with combined ADHD last year and before seeking therapy, I was at a loss with what to do and had been crippled by anxiety and fear because of uncertainty, especially when I was transitioning into another job. But over the past few months, Katie has been amazing and helped me manage my behaviours and traits and counselled me through my past experiences.
It’s been easy to open up to Katie about all aspects of my life and I’ve felt she has been able to truly understand my thoughts and feelings. She has given me brilliant tools and strategies to use which I have put in place to help with daily tasks including how to handle personal relationships and with easing my negativity.
For the first time I know I am in a much better place with my life and I finally realise my abilities and love my new found confidence. I couldn’t have done this without her help and I am so grateful for her patience, kindness and professional help during my sessions.
I would highly recommend Katie to anyone who is seeking help with managing their ADHD – 10/10.
Katie. I want to thank you for the incredible support and guidance you’ve given me so far during our sessions. You’ve taken me from being a virtual recluse, to being back at work and feeling confident about the future. You continue to give great advice regarding my struggle with alcohol and I’ve found your capacity to openly discuss your own life experiences very helpful. I feel I can now move forward with some confidence. Looking forward to our remaining sessions.
I just wanted to say what a wonderful support and help Katie has been to me and my husband and our youngest daughter.
Since our eldest daughter was diagnosed with ADHD and ASD in October and for some time before that life has been pretty tough in our household.
Katie has been brilliant at offering strategies to help us help our eldest child and to help ourselves when challenging situations arise.
Our weekly sessions allow us to talk through events that have happened and how we could better manage them so that we all feel our household has become a less explosive and stressful place to be.
Katie has separate sessions with our youngest daughter who has struggled with the arguments and consequences of our situation and she has really helped her to understand why her sister can’t always help the way she behaves and ways to be at peace with her own emotions.
I can’t recommend Katie highly enough, she is just brilliant.
In the small amount of time I’ve been having therapy, Katie has been nothing short of miraculous in the way in which she has heard, understood and helped me to respond to my inner conflicts.
Katie has really helped me confront my demons and address the ghosts and skeletons in the closet.
Initially, I was only fumbling around in the dark, feeling my way all the time, skating on thin ice attempting to get through each day in the same negative repeated patterns with the same repeated outcomes.
What Katie has taught me is that I’m someone who is destined and fated by nature to go down into the dungeons, fight the dragon and find the gold.
Katie has allowed me to work out what the hell has been going on, to help me to move away from the dark thoughts, to appreciate and understood who I am and who I can become.
In getting a better understanding of myself and how I respond to the world around me, it’s almost like I’ve gained a superpower; the light bulb moments, the way in which a situation reveals itself differently based on how Katie has taught me to respond.
I’d always been extremely sceptical about any kind of therapy, but Katie’s natural gift and ability to listen, understand and break down everything into easily digestible segments has allowed me to appreciate that I am only human! I am kinder to myself now. I am far less worried and anxious about the external and I fully appreciate that I am part of this world.
Katie is a wonderful therapist and the work we’ve done to help me to see the light more clearly will no doubt be the foundation for how I live the rest of my life. Thank you, Katie!
I’ve had eight sessions with Katie and found them to be very helpful and insightful. Katie very skilfully and naturally helps you to open up and have so many epiphanies regarding yourself and your behaviour. Katie’s understanding of my dialogue was excellent as was her empathy. I find Katie’s assessment of my circumstances, insight and advice absolutely invaluable.
I’ve had a fair amount of counselling over the years. I knew I needed it but didn’t really want to attend. Generally dreading each session and having to build myself up to them.
I never felt that way with Headstuff’s Katie, I really enjoyed our sessions and the bits that were painful were worth the pain!
Katie is engaging, sympathetic, relatable and friendly. It made such a difference having a counsellor who also has lived experience of ADHD. She gave me some great ideas, food for thought and I felt supported at a time when I really, really needed it.