About Usha

 

Hello and thank you for visiting my site. I'm Usha Chudasama and I hold a positive intention to help people to change their lives…and I love my job. Don't get me wrong, it is very challenging and highly emotional but greatly rewarding when I hear the good news from my clients about the changes they are making and the happy endings.

 

My own journey has been like a roller coaster and my self-help and personal development began in 2000 when work stress as a primary school teacher led to Chronic Fatigue and a year off from work. During that time, I read many self-help books and in the years that followed, I practiced meditation and qualified as a spiritual healer. I also researched, trained and practiced as a life coach and Louise Hay practitioner to deliver transformational workshops using a holistic approach for people based on meditation, spirituality, positive psychology and cognitive behaviour therapy approaches to bring well-being and harmony in mind, body and spirit.

 

These workshops were successful and I adapted the techniques for children and developed “The Healing Feeling” which I still also deliver. See www.healing-feeling.co.uk for further details.

 

When clients were ready and motivated to make changes, this worked really well, however, I soon realised that some people needed interventions that could remove emotional blocks from childhood, and children needed therapeutic play-based interventions for some issues, and I was not adequately trained to help them.

 

This became my motivation to enrol on a post graduate diploma in Contemporary Psychotherapy.  This professional training and my guiding principle, combined with my previous work, uses a wide range of therapies rather than a fixed approach.

 

It is an integrative, outcome solution focussed model and draws on many disciplines including Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), gestalt therapy, systemic family therapy, Ericksonian hypnotherapy, self-relations work, neuroscience, cognitive behaviour therapy and positive psychology. Basically, what this means is that I can respond flexibly to the different developmental stages and cycles of your progress. You can read more about how I work, the conditions I can work with, and the therapy approaches I use to help my adult and child clients with their recovery.

 

My Clinical Experiences

 

I have experience of working with adult and child clients for short-term (6-8 weeks), longer term (6-12 weeks) and open ended therapy (sometimes lasting 34+ weeks).

 

Over the last 6 years, I have worked as a psychotherapist for a charity in the voluntary sector with adult victims of sexual and domestic abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, financial), female genital mutilation and honour based crimes and young mothers in refuge, 

 

I have also worked as a low-intensity psychological well-being practitioner (PWP) within the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies team (IAPT) offering short-term therapy to those affected by anxiety and depression related disorders.

 

I have used therapeutic play and art-based interventions with ThePlace2Be to support children experiencing emotional problems.  

 

I trained as a primary school teacher in 1997 and since 2006 my focus has been on working therapeutically with children that suffer from social, emotional and behavioural issues as an Outreach Behaviour Consultant.

 

At present, I am working within the NHS Community Psychologies Team in Waltham Forest with adult clients that have complex and co-morbid symptoms and need longer term intervention. I'm also working as a school counsellor in two primary schools in the London Borough of Redbridge and run a private clinic from my home in E18 area.

 

Qualifications

 

• Post Graduate Diploma in Contemporary Psychotherapy

• Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)

• NLP Trainer

• Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) for Depression

• Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Level 1

• Diploma in Life CoachingTransformational Teacher – (Teacher Training course based on the work of Louise Hay)

• BA (Hons.) Education QTS