Joanna Miller is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist with over 10 years of experience counselling children and adults with a wide range of issues. Joanna is also The Personal Development Group Facilitator on the postgraduate counselling diploma at Brighton University.
Joanna’s background is in education. She has many years of experience teaching children with special educational needs in secondary schools and teaching English to adult non-native speakers and counselling skills to adults on the pre-diploma courses.
Joanna has worked with people of all ages experiencing a range of difficulties, including:
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Anxiety, Depression and mood swings
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Grief, Trauma and Loss
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History of Abuse
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Lack of Confidence or Low Self Esteem
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Managing Conflict
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Pressures of Competing at a High Level
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Major Life Transitions
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Relationship Issues
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Stress, Feeling Overwhelmed
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Feelings of Emptiness and Lack of Fulfilment in Life
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Career Anxiety, Panic – Public Versus Private Life
Joanna taught counselling skills courses to adults for five years. Subject areas included the practical skills of relationship building, empathy, safeguarding practices, boundary-making and keeping, assertiveness and confidence building, and theoretical subjects, including contemporary ideas on attachment theory, child development, and neuroscience.
Joanna’s postgraduate diploma was underpinned by psychodynamic theory giving her a thorough knowledge of Freud, Jung, Klein, Winnicott, Lacan and other Freudians and included learning about object-relations theory and other post-Freudian ideas such as Transactional Analysis.
Joanna is now the personal development group facilitator on the postgraduate psychodynamic diploma at Brighton University. The trainee counsellors in these groups are in an unstructured space where they are responsible for their learning and discovery of their process without direct leadership or instruction.
Interest/Specialties:
Joanna is nearly halfway through a four-year training programme to become a Feldenkrais practitioner. The discipline of Feldenkrais is a system that encourages awareness through movement and is designed to promote a sense of well-being by a conscious focus on neuromuscular activity through movements sometimes so small as to be almost imperceptible, which improve flexibility and coordination and increase ease and range of motion.
Feldenkrais works directly on the brain and central nervous system. It helps balance the regulatory functions of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the nervous system responsible for the fight/flight response and the ability to rest and digest efficiently. This study has led Joanna to look more closely at the work of such therapists as Peter Levine and Dan Siegel.
Joanna is a psychodynamic counsellor, which means she believes most mental activity takes place in the unconscious, and her role is to help people gain access to it and insights from it. According to Joanna, we can’t change our habits until we know what they are.
Qualifications:
Post Grad Diploma Psychodynamic Counselling
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Certificate
British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy Accreditation
Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults
Post Graduate Certificate in Education
B.A.Hons Modern Studies 2:1
I believe that deep within us, there is a stored memory of our ancestors’ intimacy with nature. We can bring to life this powerful bond through trips into woods, fields and up mountains, walks by lakes and the sea. Even sitting in a garden surrounded by plants, humming insects and feeling the elements around us can be a restorative experience.
The denial of the reciprocal relationship between humans and the natural world is detrimental to both, and the realisation of it likewise is healing for both.
Joanna Miller
