Chrissie Henson

I am a person-centred therapist and author who lives with cerebral palsy that affects my walking, hand coordination and speech.

My journey to becoming a therapist started not long after my twenty-first birthday. My best friend since age five died suddenly from her disabilities, hydrocephalus and epilepsy. At the same time, I was experiencing discrimination in the workplace for the first time. I worked as a creche assistant in a sport centre. This happened when another member of staff became annoyed with me and started to mimic the way I speak. Working for the local city council, I spoke to the people in charge of disability rights and was told to report this matter to my manager. The number of staff involved was spoken with, but no action was taken against them. On hearing what had happened, other members of staff then stopped speaking to me because I had reported their friend. I spent a year or more going to work with the majority of stuff not talking to me. This led to both physical and mental problems with my health and was the first time I engaged in counselling myself. Having an outsider to talk to about what it was like losing my closest friend, and the only other disabled person I knew, alongside going to work every day knowing I was going to be ignored and left out, helped me to find coping strategies and plan what I wanted to do with my life. I eventually left the job and found a room where I was a lot happier.

It wasn’t until years later and in my last paid employment where I sadly encountered discrimination at work again. In 2010, I was happy in my work as a project manager with a very supportive manager, and had a good social life. Unfortunately, the company’s senior managers decided to change the managers around. This gave my other team members the opportunity to speak to the new manager and complain that I was doing a different job from them which wasn’t fair in the opinion. My new manager decided to take away my project manager role and replace it with a customer speaking role, which I was unable to do due to my speech difficulties. After contacting human resources, the company was told they couldn’t put me in a role that included making telephone calls to customers, so they created a new role that didn’t use my experience. The stress of this situation led to issues in my personal life, which in turn led to me feeling rejected, isolated, and alone, and experiencing suicidal thoughthis was when I entered therapy for the second time.as I again struggled with my mental health, I was given one to one (CBT) cognitive behavioural therapy, which is the National Health Systems (NHS) treatment for depression. I also attended a group for mindfulness, both of which helped me to refocus. I joined a choir and got my first dog, Angel, for company. In 2013, I lost my job.

This gave me the opportunity to return to college and undertake my training to become a therapist. The training lasted 3 years. I started my first 10 week course in February 2013. It was a introductory counselling skills – where I learned what counselling skills were, and how to use them by practising the skills in the group with the other students. During this time I was studying part time, receiving more therapy – as a course requirement, and looking for work, I was a student counsellor at 2 charities.

To gain the 100 therapy hours needed for my qualifications, I volunteered with Cruse Bereavement Support which provides counselling to adults after they have experienced a bereavement and need someone to talk to.
My second placement was at Mosaic Disability services, as well as daytime activities in the day centre, they provided counselling for free to people living with disabilities in the Leicestershire area.

I would visit the clients at home once a week for one hour. Being a trainee person-centred therapist, the clients were the ones who decided what we discussed in each session, with no limit to how many sessions they had. We reviewed progress every six weeks and decided what they still wanted to work on. Although I visited the clients alone, I met with my supervisor monthly to give them an overview of my work and discuss any issues or share any concerns.

Again I completed assignments, practised counselling skills with my peers and undertook an exam at the end of the course, which was to answer questions on a recording of one of my own sessions as a therapist – this is normally done using a voice recording, but mine was adapted to a video recording as I was a little apprehensive that the assessors may not fully understand my speech as they had never met me – although it was necessary for my exam, seeing myself on screen, in exam conditions was very unnerving. The exam was difficult and remembering all the theory terminology was hard. I was nervous but luckily both my recording and answers passed – it was at that point I became a person-centred therapist.
I enjoyed my time at Mosaic so much I continued to volunteer for another year after gaining my qualifications and took on the role of assessing the clients that requested counselling to get an understanding of what their mental health issues were and who was best to support them.

It was in 2018 that I decided that if I was going to make being a therapist my career, I would have to take a leap of faith and start my own business, as gaining paid work as a therapist was hard enough, let alone for a newly qualified therapist.

So, I spoke to my advisor at the job centre and was introduced to a scheme called the new enterprise allowance scheme. The criteria to be accepted onto the scheme was to write a business plan and present it to an advisor. After being accepted I attended an eight week course that helped me gain more knowledge on how to start a business and the requirements of being self-employed.

After completing the course, I chose a name for my business “Counseling With Chrissie. As I didn’t want to work from home at this point, I decided to rent a room in a therapy practice that was already established, and become an associate, while at the same time doing temp work as a counsellor working at Leicester University providing counselling to students.

My private practice started to slowly grow, after a couple of years I moved to my own rented room which I was enjoying working in. Then six weeks later, the pandemic struck and I had to teach myself how to use zoom and transfer my clients from face to face sessions to online sessions overnight for the first wave of lockdown, during the following lockdowns therapists were added to the key workers list so I returned to my office, but eventually decided I liked working from home, so the spare bedroom became my therapy room.

In September 2022, I made the decision to move, which also meant rebuilding my therapy business in a new location, as well as working online during lockdown. I did a lot of networking on LinkedIn, which gave me the opportunity to ask my connections for any advice they could give me on how to get established in a new area. This is where the idea of writing my book came from. It was suggested that I use it as a marketing tool, as well as writing some therapy courses that people could buy online and do at home in their own time or ask for help via a therapy session if preferred.
I started writing my courses and called them “Bite Size Therapy.” They offer a range of mental health tools from fact and opinion worksheets – where you write down the facts and opinions of a situation that is causing you to overthink or experience anxiety or stress.y seeing what are facts and what are just opinions, you have a better understanding of what is really happening, what you can do and change, which in turn lessens the power of anxiety and stress – this is one of the techniques I teach and use with my clients, which they find beneficial.

The aim for my book, A Look Inside The Therapy Room, is to provide information for anyone looking for therapy that may have concerns about what really happens in the sessions, I started out my writing and answering the questions I am commonly asked, then added in some clients’ experiences and outcomes. I wanted it to be a book that helps people to reflect on their own thoughts and feelings, so I added in some pages where I ask questions about how they feel about what they have just read and how it affects them or relates to their experiences. I also added in my story of being born dead, which resulted in my having cerebral palsy and the challenges of bullying, discrimination, and living and working as a disabled person.

To date I have been approached by three disability charities, Enrych, Hospice Hope, and Disability Plus to work with them either as a therapist or on mental health projects and an employment assistance program company. I am also being asked to provide articles for their websites. My book, and therapy work can help anyone experiencing difficulties with mental health, negative thoughts and feelings or just wanting changes in their lives.

I am hoping the book will also open up opportunities for mes to talk to groups about my book and mental health, or just share my story, and more importantly inspire others living with disabilities, and others to do what it is they REALLY want to do, and break down the barriers, both internal and external, that are placed in their way.

Some would see the book being on sale as the end of the journey, I hope it’s just the beginning.