Dr Knowles is an experienced clinical psychologist who aims to put clients at ease, help them make sense of their difficulties, and find a way forwards that is tailored to what is truly important to clients in their lives.
Dr Knowles qualified from University College London as a clinical psychologist in 2009 and has many years’ experience of working as a qualified clinical psychologist within the NHS. She has worked in senior roles across a range of different services, including adult, older adult, and physical health teams. She also has many years’ experience of working in private practice, seeing clients individually, for couples’ work, and as families.
Whilst she has always worked directly with clients, she has lots of experience of helping teams function and in supervising other psychologists. As such, she brings a wealth of experience of working with people experiencing a wide range of emotional distress and relationship difficulties. This means that Dr Knowles is able to work flexibly, drawing on her considerable experience to bring in a range of understandings and ideas based on what is brought by clients to the therapy session.
Dr Knowles is experienced in offering a number of different therapeutic modalities, including compassion focused therapy, narrative therapy, and systemic family therapy. More recently, she has trained in more embodied approaches to working with mental health difficulties. As such, she is able to adapt her approach to develop therapy that is uniquely tailored to each client’s needs. Dr Knowles aims to balance the need for understanding with the need for movement forward. Her sessions bring in ideas and strategies to cope and to change, but these are always developed in a collaborative way based on what the client knows about themselves.
Dr Knowles approaches all her work with respect and integrity. She is very aware of the impact of discrimination and societal injustice on mental health. She recognises the limiting effect that mainstream discourses can have on people. She enables conversations that open up space to examine how this may affect clients and she explores ways to counter these effects, where relevant.
Dr Knowles takes a holistic approach to her work, which means she is able to consider and work with the relational context in which clients live, their experiences, as well as their thoughts, beliefs and emotions.
Above all, Dr Knowles is a caring psychologist, who accepts clients wherever they are at, and works alongside them to discover a way to develop a better relationship with themselves, and those around them.