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Michele H - ADHD HEADSTUFF THERAPY

MICHELE H

MUM OF 2 ADHD SONS

ART PSYCHOTHERAPIST & TRAUMA THERAPIST
EMDR PRACTITIONER
CHILDREN 5+ THERAPIST
TEEN & ADULT THERAPIST
PARENTING SUPPORT
SCHOOL AVOIDANCE & SCHOOL BASED ANXIETY
EATING DISORDERS
ANXIETY DISORDERS INCLUDING OCD


Michele offers Online Therapy and Face to Face in West Sussex, BN43

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PROFILE

Michele is one of only two therapists at Headstuff without a diagnosis of ADHD herself but who fits in nicely due to her extensive personal and professional experience of ADHD.

She is a state registered Art Psychotherapist and accredited EMDR practitioner with over 25 years  experience in health, education and social care settings.

Her experience with children and teenagers includes working in the NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in Looked After Children’s Services and  Adoption organisations.

Michele has also spent a decade working in Primary and Secondary schools as well as with excluded teenagers in a Pupil Referral Unit and in a Young Offender’s Unit.

She has repeatedly seen first-hand how mentally damaged and traumatised the school system leaves many young people with ADHD.

Michele’s experience with adults includes working within many different Mental Health Services, a Forensic Unit and, more recently, working in the NHS with adults who have physical health conditions often stemming from addictions and poor mental health.

She has been working with neurodivergent clients for 25 years.  She is passionate about helping children and adults understand their neurodivergent brains especially the link between this and their struggles with their mental health.

Michele strives to help clients understand how ADHD impacts their mental health and how the unmet needs of the ADHD brain can lead to a lifetime of poor mental health, addiction, relationship, employment and general self-esteem issues.

Michele trained as an EMDR practitioner in 2008.  She has found that EMDR is highly effective in helping ADHD clients reframe their damaged sense of self that often results from traumatic experiences growing up being misunderstood, not liked, negatively labelled and rejected.

In her personal life, Michele has ample experience of ADHD having two ADHD teenage sons along with ASD and Dyslexia and other coexisting conditions.  Michele has battled the broken SEND system first hand. She has fought the system to get both her sons diagnosed and then continued the exhausting fight for an EHCP for her eldest son.

It has not been a smooth journey and Michele is full of understanding and empathy towards the vast majority of parents of ADHD children who also have to fight.

Michele knows how most parents of ADHD children shed blood, sweat and tears to get their children understood, their needs met and their mental health protected. She enjoys guiding and supporting parents through the system, drawing on her own experience of battling her way through it.

As the only neurotypical in her family, she also has an enhanced understanding of the difficult family dynamics in neurodiverse families and the impact on their neurotypical members.

Michele is also familiar with, and empathic towards, the exasperating challenges that parents of ADHD children and teenagers face at home having struggled as a lone parent of two ADHD boys. She openly shares parenting strategies that have helped her manage her boys at various stages of their development.

She knows how raising a ‘problem’ child is a lonely place and has experienced the stigma and judgment that often comes with the role. This combined with her professional knowledge of therapeutic parenting techniques, provides a unique and helpful support to parents who are at the end of their tether and in need of support and guidance wherever they are in the ADHD journey.

Michele has a warm, creative and person-centred approach when working with children, teenagers and adults. For many clients this might involve using art materials and not talking much, others prefer to use sensory play or art materials whilst they talk, and some clients just talk.

Michele’s approach is very much about finding each client’s unique way of using the therapy space to benefit them the most and she is often successful in engaging clients who are not able to manage talking therapies.

Michele works from a private, modern therapy room in Shoreham by Sea, six miles from Brighton. The venue includes a separate waiting room for parents bringing younger children.

 

Qualifications & CPD

  • MA in Art Psychotherapy. Hertfordshire University  1999
  • B.A (hons) Degree in Fine Art (painting). (2.1) Cheltenham School of Art  1993
  • EMDR Professional Training, Levels 1 2 and 3. EMDR Workshops, London  2008
  • Group Analysis, Institute of Group Analysis. Brighton  2004

 

Continued Professional Development

  • Safeguarding Children Levels 1-3
  • Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Levels 1-3
  • The Neuroscience of ADHD
  • ADHD and Shame
  • Female ADHD
  • The Science of AuDHD
  • The Neuroscience of Trauma
  • Art Therapy and Mindfulness
  • Art Therapy in Education
  • Attachment Theory
  • Eating Disorders
  • Therapeutic Parenting
  • Deliberate Self-Harm

Member HCPC, BAAT and EMDR Association UK