The person behind tonic
People are complex. I like that.
I’m interested in the bits that don’t quite make sense - the patterns we keep repeating, the things we know but can’t seem to change, the relationships that get under our skin, and all the contradictions that come with being a person.
That’s the territory I’m interested in, and it’s a big part of why I created tonic.
Not because anything is obviously wrong, but because the person you have become no longer feels fully reflected in the life you are living. Sometimes this appears as anxiety, overwhelm, burnout, emotional exhaustion, or a persistent feeling that something is missing. Sometimes it arrives through diagnosis, motherhood, divorce, loss, change, or simply the quiet realisation that you have spent so long adapting that you are no longer entirely sure who you are beneath it all.
tonic was created for women who want to understand themselves more clearly.
The questions that sit at the centre of my work are often questions of identity. Who have you become? How do you see yourself? What assumptions do you carry about who you should be? And what happens when those assumptions no longer fit?
Much of the emotional struggle people experience is not simply about what is happening in their lives, but about the relationship they have with themselves whilst it is happening. The stories they carry about who they are. The expectations they place upon themselves. The ways they have learned to cope, adapt, perform, achieve, or keep going, often without stopping to consider whether those ways of being still serve them.
My work is shaped by both professional training and lived experience. I was diagnosed with ADHD later in life and understand first-hand the emotional impact of spending years feeling overwhelmed internally whilst still appearing capable externally. I also understand the complexity of rebuilding yourself through significant life transitions, including motherhood, divorce after a 20-year relationship, identity shifts, burnout, and changing relationships with yourself and others.
The work itself is often surprisingly simple. Two people sitting together, paying careful attention to what is happening beneath the surface. Looking at patterns, assumptions, emotions, identity, relationships, and the stories we carry about ourselves. Over time, that understanding can create profound shifts in how we experience ourselves and our lives.
Training & professional experience
My coaching practice brings together specialist ADHD training, advanced therapeutic counselling training and direct experience working therapeutically with women.
ADHD Coaching Diploma — Distinction
| Centre of Excellence
My specialist training in ADHD coaching provides a detailed understanding of how ADHD can present across different areas of a person’s life — including executive functioning, attention and motivation, emotional regulation, overwhelm, self-esteem, relationships and patterns of coping.
I’m particularly interested in the less visible experience of ADHD: the cumulative impact of living with a brain that may have spent years being misunderstood, adapting, compensating or working significantly harder to meet expectations.
My approach is therefore highly individual. Rather than applying generic ADHD strategies, I work collaboratively to understand the interaction between neurodivergence, environment, emotional experience, relationships, personal history and current demands — and what might genuinely support the person in front of me.
Therapeutic Counselling | Currently completing Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling
Alongside my coaching training, I am completing advanced professional training in therapeutic counselling, including substantial supervised practice with clients.
My core therapeutic training is person-centred, with particular emphasis on the therapeutic relationship, psychological safety, autonomy and the development of greater self-awareness and self-trust.
My training has developed my understanding of trauma, self-concept, conditions of worth, identity, emotional processing, internal and external locus of evaluation, relationship patterns and the influence of early experiences on present-day emotional and relational functioning.
It also involves rigorous training in ethical practice, professional boundaries, safeguarding, reflective practice and the appropriate use of the practitioner-client relationship.
This therapeutic knowledge adds depth to my coaching without turning coaching into therapy. It enables me to recognise complexity, work sensitively with what emerges and understand that a presenting difficulty rarely exists in isolation from the rest of a person’s experience.
Therapeutic practice
| Women’s Centre, Huddersfield
Since April 2025 I have worked directly with women through supervised therapeutic counselling practice at the Women’s Centre in Huddersfield.
My work has involved complex and sensitive presentations including trauma and abuse, adverse childhood experiences, difficult family and relationship dynamics, neurodivergence, chronic illness, loss, identity, self-worth, boundaries, emotional overwhelm and significant periods of change.
Working with trauma has given me a strong appreciation of the ways earlier experiences can continue to influence emotional responses, relationships, beliefs about the self, patterns of protection and a person’s sense of safety and agency.
It has also taught me the importance of not reducing someone to a diagnosis, behaviour or presenting problem. Context matters. History matters. Relationships matter. And the meaning an individual makes of their own experience matters.
How this shapes my coaching
| I work from the understanding that people are complex.
ADHD may be part of what is happening, but so might overwhelm, relationships, past experiences, competing demands, patterns developed over many years, or simply being at a point in life where something no longer feels right.
My role isn't to diagnose, analyse or tell someone who they are. It is to bring psychological understanding, careful observation, curiosity and specialist coaching knowledge to a collaborative conversation that helps them understand themselves more clearly.
That might involve identifying a recurring pattern, understanding why something feels disproportionately difficult, exploring the relationship between ADHD and emotional experience, or translating new insight into practical change.
The work can be reflective and psychologically deep, while remaining grounded in the realities of everyday life.