Barry Smale

Since starting work as a therapist in 2000, as well as a private practice,  I have worked in psychiatric hospitals, GP surgeries, charity services, clinics, outreach work and services to business. The wide variety of client base I deal with led me to train in a mix of therapies that worked with different types of people and conditions. The acute clients I deal with led me to investigate and focus on therapies that helped people stabilise and get back to health quickly. During the work I have done with acute problems of addiction, eating disorders and bi-polar disorder  I often encountered trauma and difficulties with self-regulation. This led me to trauma therapy techniques like biofeedback, and how to help people get better at managing their own state. As a result I started a number of groups in the hospital to pass on this information to clients and help them make practical use of it. This resulted in work with Professor Gordon Turnbull, who specialises in Complex Trauma, and led to the development of the Dedicated Stress and Trauma Service.

Before training as a psychotherapist I worked in business for around 20 years in a variety of management and directorship roles. I currently lecture RADA and The Royal Academy on Resilience and teach Chi Kung and Mindfulness.

During my career I have been fortunate to work in a wide variety of settings and with all kinds of clients. It has led me to focus less on one style of therapy and more on the common things that help people get well. I have trained in a number of approaches (including Psychodynamic, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), EMDR, various sensorimotor) and, as a result of the variety of help clients have needed, have learned how these approaches can be used and combined to help people be well. My approach is to identify what is getting in the way of people getting on with life as they want to and use my clinical skill and judgement to use the right approach to help them change these things.

My career as a therapist has coincided with a time of great development in understanding of genetics and neuroscience. The leaps forward in these areas have helped us understand more about things that underlay many psychological problems. It has meant practices like mindfulness and biofeedback are now understood in terms of the real effects they have on people and when they are useful (and when they aren’t). I have been lucky enough to work with pioneering people like Professor Gordon Turnbull and Phil Mollon who have helped me to learn to apply this understanding to people’s problems. It is great to work for an organisation that understands how everything from Chi Kung through biofeedback to more traditional psychotherapy can help people overcome their difficulties.