Ms Nina Green

A conversation with Nina Green

• What led you to choose psychotherapy or counselling as a profession?

  After starting a postgraduate degree in Psychology, I realised I was much more interested in the "counselling conversation" than the "rats and stats" research-based approach of formal Psychology, so I changed my degree to Counselling, a choice I have never regretted.
  
  My own experience of receiving effective therapeutic support also led me to train so I could give back by providing support to others. I strongly believe that a therapist should have undergone their own therapy - both so that they are aware of their own issues and limitations, and also to ensure that every therapist has a sense of the process their clients are engaged in!
  

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional development?

  I have been deeply influenced by what's known as the "third wave" of cognitive therapies - approaches that are more focused on becoming more skilful at navigating our whole human experience - just as it is - rather than trying to challenge or remove "unwanted" inner experiences.
  
  I draw often from compassionate "acceptance" and mindfulness approaches including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness Based Self Compassion (MBSC) and 'Loving Kindness' practices drawn from a wide range of Buddhist traditions. Although I try to steer away from long, formal meditative practices (these can be a bit much unless a client is very passionate about trying them out), I have experimented and drawn from Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and Cognitive Therapy. My approach aims to support clients to develop skills that help build a great quality of life - warts and all - what John Kabbat Zinn calls "full catastrophe living."
  
  A quick note that I am not a religious person, but have been impressed by the accessible philosophy behind movements such as the Buddhist Recovery movements in the US, which have also proved to be very effective at supporting recovery from (C)PTSD and some varieties of serious mental illness. Writers such as Josh Korda, Tara Brach, Pema Chodron and Sharon Salzberg have been influential in my own practice of Counselling.

• Which particular aspects of health or the human journey are you interested in?

  I'm passionate about trauma informed practice, and am almost always enrolled in training around this area, or looking for more ways to deliver a service that supports women recovering from Complex and single incident Trauma. This is an ongoing area of learning.
  
  My other special interests are:
  - Working with Adult Children of Parents with a Mental Illness, especially around personal growth and individuation, exploring disenfranchised or ambiguous grief, and how to set up boundaries that allow clients to 'catch up' on the growth that they may have had to put off in order to stay safe or care for another when they were young.
  - Chronic and Invisible Illness, including exploring experiences with the health system, managing treatment and experiences of loss and grief around aspects of the self that may not fit easily into the mainstream narrative of grief, and working on strategies and skills to live a meaningful and valued life while managing ongoing symptoms and other life impacts.
  

• What methods do you use?

  I'm a talk therapist who loves to listen, and I've paid a lot of attention to learning how to have a 'counselling conversation', which is different from the kind of informal chat you might have with a good friend, and is designed to make a safe space for big experiences.
  
  I enjoy teaching somatic tools such as grounding or 'dropping anchor' skills, as well as exploring resources that can help support positive change such as exploring 'sensory profiles' to help client's feel they have more control (and experience less overwhelm) in daily life. Paying attention to the real circumstances of a client's life - the impact of health, identity, social issues, work, and connections - is also an important element of my approach.
  
  As a trained teacher I'm also passionate about 'psycho-education' - which just means exploring the existing evidence and information about our experiences so we can make better choices and feel more empowered and knowledgeable about what is happening for us!

• When do you think the client will start to feel that progress is being made?

  Clients of mental health practitioners often report an initial positive 'bump' when they and their counsellor first start to connect and unpack the client's experiences and goals. Learning new skills and putting your experience in context can provide a powerful sense of progress in the first few sessions, but it's worth noting that for complex concerns and situations, positive change is best approached with patience.
  
  Counselling is much more like a hiking trail than a highway - kind of muddy and bendy and the journey can sometimes feel like stalling or gong downhill again. Patience and perseverance often deliver big returns, however, and consistent small changes can be much more impactful than expecting a big, sweeping 'fix'.
  
  My sense is that progress often reveals itself when a client starts to behave in ways that are increasingly 'flexible' and open to new experience outside therapy - trying new things, feeling that more options are available to them, and allowing themselves to persevere with things they value *even though* they still feel some worry or stress.
  
  The writer Andrew Solomon famously said that "the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality" and this is a foundational part of my own practice. If my client is experiencing a sense of being more alive, more engaged and better able to accept a wide range of feeling and experience, then I know we're on the right path.

• How has therapy made a difference in your life?

  I often remember my clients when I'm doing something I find challenging - one woman I worked with experienced very intense anxiety but continually turned up to things she valued, and I found it so inspiring that keeping her courage in mind has really helped me persist in things that I found meaningful but pretty scary to try!
  
  A big impact of undergoing my own therapy was that I became much less scared of my own inner experience, which had the unexpected side effect of making me feel much less judgmental or scared of other people!

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

  I absolutely love my job. Tuning in to a really big conversation about things that matter to my clients is endlessly interesting and meaningful. I can honestly say I've never had a boring session.

• Do you ever have 'bad hair' days?

  Yes.
  
  All the time :) Every now and again I have a great hair day and I try to roll with those as a lovely bonus rather than the end game.
  

• What do you think is the most significant problem we face, in the world today?

  This is an interesting question but - with apologies - I would prefer not to answer here.
  
  I think talking about this with other people rather than answering in writing is important as setting down just one 'biggest issue' can be so divisive. There are a lot of really important urgent matters in the world. I will say I am a 'leftie' and I'm interested in people (hence my job). I hope that gives a sense of who I am :)

• Can you share the name of a book, film, song, event or work of art that inspires you?

  'The Body Keeps the Score' by Bessel van der Kolk has been a game changing book for so many people. It's an exploration of the neuroscience and contemporary evidence for healing practices around Trauma, and it has sat on bestseller lists around the world for years since it was published - with good reason.
  
  I'm a wide reader and also absolutely love the essayist and novelist Olivia Laing ('To the River' and 'The Lonely City' are favourites), and am a big fan of Janet Malcolm, but I am also a real geek and read almost every one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels when I was younger.