Elizabeth Day, UKCP Accredited Psychotherapist

Elizabeth Day

LONDON SE22 English
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Elizabeth Day, UKCP Accredited Psychotherapist

Elizabeth Day

LONDON SE22 English
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My Approach

I am a systemic psychotherapist. That means that I am trained to work with individuals, couples, families and groups. I am interested in helping people manage personal difficulties and also challenges in their relationships at home, at work and in the wider community. I am a specialist in Non-violent Resistance (NVR) an approach which helps parents whose children are showing violent and self destructive behaviour.

I am an approved systemic supervisor.
I can provide individual and group supervision. In addition, I have experience of teaching and supervising at masters and doctoral level.

My pronouns are ‘she’, ‘her’, ‘hers’.

About Me

Professional experience
I have worked in a range of residential, social work and health settings. Residential settings include: a Home Office approved bail hostel for women, a residential home for looked after children and a psychiatric in-patient unit for adolescents. Social work and health settings include: a children’s social work team, managing a hospital social work team, managing a community care team, and developing HIV services. I worked for eleven years as principal family therapist in a child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS).Special interests
I created and co led the first NVR group programme in partnership with colleagues in Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust. Elisabeth Heismann and I co-authored the NVR groupwork manual Non-violent Resistance Programme published by Pavilion in 2010. I chose to make the NVR group programme the subject of my doctoral research and was awarded my degree by the University of Bedfordshire in 2015. Along with Dr Julia Jude and Elisabeth Heismann I have edited a new book called Non-violent Resistance Innovations in Practice.

Since I retired from full time employment in the NHS I have developed a portfolio career. I teach and supervise on the Professional Doctorate in Systemic Practice at the University of Bedfordshire and the Systemic Supervision course at the Tavistock, I am a deputy editor of Murmurations: Journal of Transformative Systemic Practice. I am involved in Public and Patient Involvement initiatives around cancer, and I maintain a small private therapy and supervision practice.

I work with

  • Children and young people
  • Couples
  • Families
  • Groups
  • Individuals

Special Interests

Like all UKCP registered psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors I can work with a wide range of issues, but here are some areas in which I have a special interest or additional experience.

Non-violent resistance is a form of political and social struggle in which people come together to resist oppression through their physical presence and embodied protest (e.g. occupations, sit-ins, marches and strikes). The concepts have been applied by Haim Omer and others to situations in which parents find themselves dealing with children who show extreme forms of violent, challenging, non-functional and (self-) destructive behaviour. The most well-known exponents of political and social non-violent resistance are Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The non-violent resistance therapeutic programme was inspired by the work of Haim Omer. Omer applied the approach of social and political non-violent resistance to work with individual families where the parents had lost their presence and their voice in their child’s life. De-escalation, active resistance and the rebuilding of relationships brought about profound changes in how the families functioned, and improved the wellbeing of both parents and children. In social work and mental health settings the principles of non-violent resistance are applied therapeutically to situations where the natural order in the home has been upset and children and young people are displaying violent and/or oppressive behaviour towards parents and siblings. Characteristically, parents needing NVR feel that their child is in control, that they are ‘walking on eggshells’. They are extremely distressed and have lost any sense of how to change things. They are often themselves contributing to the escalation and chaos. Because of their shame and fear of how others will perceive them, they are isolated. Often, they have told no one, not even close family, just how bad things are. Those who are working sometimes lose their job because their employer cannot tolerate repeated absences, or they may give up work because they feel so stressed. Parents score highly on depression and anxiety questionnaires and this finding is borne out by our own research. Our way of using non-violent resistance as a therapeutic group intervention differs from the model used by Omer. Omer and his team see parents for individual coaching sessions. They have psychology trainees who regularly telephone parents and provide ongoing support. We chose instead to develop our intervention as a group programme. We did this for both practical and clinical reasons: we could see more parents if we saw them all together, and we found parents gave one another support and learned from one another every bit as much as they did from us. Children and young people with behavioural difficulties are hard to help. Often their behaviour seems to be no problem for them at all – except that it gets them into trouble; however, they are generally angry, unhappy, and frustrated with their inability to change things for the better, although they are usually unable to articulate this. Their behaviour is best understood as a communication. A parenting programme is a structured intervention to improve relationships and behaviour; it can be delivered either to parents in a group or to individuals and their families or to a mixture of both.

Types of Therapies Offered

  • Family and Systemic Psychotherapist
  • Family Therapist
  • Systemic Family and Couple Psychotherapist
  • Systemic Psychotherapist

Types of sessions

  • Face to Face - Long Term
  • Face to Face - Short Term
  • Online Therapy

LONDON Office

60 Forest Hill Road
East Dulwich
LONDON SE22 0RS
UK

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Cost:

Fee: I have a sliding fee scale which means that you pay according to your income. All fees are negotiable.

Concession:

Fees negotiable

UKCP College

  • College of Family Couple and Systemic Psychotherapy (CFCSP)

Working with Children

For more information about therapy for children and young people, visit our info page.
Elizabeth Day

Elizabeth Day

LONDON SE22
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