The Human Behind The Curiously Kind Counsellor
Hello, I’m Laurie, a BACP-accredited psychotherapeutic counsellor working online with adults across the UK.
I’m naturally curious about how we find our way through the experiences that affect us deeply and shape how we see ourselves and the lives we’re living.
Some of this I know from the inside
I know what it’s like for life to look perfectly okay on paper while inwardly feeling very different on the inside. To be conscientious, capable and good at getting on with things, while being much harder on yourself than other people realise. For a long time, I thought that was just how I was. I didn’t necessarily have words for what felt wrong. I just presumed it was a “me thing”. I was sad more often than I wanted to be, criticism could affect me deeply, and I was increasingly struggling in a life that was supposed to make sense because I had “chosen” it. Then, in my twenties, I lost a parent suddenly and unexpectedly. It was the kind of loss that divided my life into a before and after. It changed my relationships, my sense of myself and the future I had imagined.
It wasn't until I started therapy that I began to realise just how much I'd absorbed ideas about what life should look like, how I should show up in the world and how I should be coping with my grief. There were a lot of “shoulds” and, underneath them, a sense that I was somehow getting it all wrong. That if I could just fix myself, perhaps everything would finally work out the way it was supposed to.
Therapy gave me somewhere I could be honest about how I really felt. Somewhere to pay attention to what I was actually experiencing, gradually understand more about myself, build more self-compassion and begin making changes in how I lived and related to myself and other people.
That experience still shapes the way I work now: with curiosity about what someone has lived through, compassion for the ways they’ve learnt to cope and adapt, and space to choose differently. It also helped shape my belief that therapy should make room for the individual person and their experience, rather than measuring them against how they “should” feel or cope.
The slightly less direct route to becoming a therapist
Before retraining as a counsellor, I spent almost a decade working in HR, coaching and leadership development across the private sector and the NHS.
Becoming a therapist was something I'd felt drawn towards for years, but it took me a while to find my way there. I began my training almost a decade ago and have now been in private practice for over five years.
I continue to develop my work through further training and professional development, bringing together what I've learned through my professional experience, my training and the people I've had the privilege of working with.
Why Curiously Kind?
The name came from something that has become increasingly important to me, both personally and professionally.
We can be curious about ourselves without picking ourselves apart. We can understand why a pattern developed without deciding we have to keep living it. We can build compassion for the parts of ourselves that learnt to cope, adapt or protect us, while also creating change where something different is needed.
For me, that’s what being Curiously Kind is about. Understanding what we’ve lived through with compassion, while making room to choose differently where we want to.
Outside the therapy room
When I’m not working, you’ll usually find me reading, doing yoga, doodling, crafting (badly), cooking (also badly), or spending time with the people I love. Being based in Poole, Dorset, I also enjoy walks along the coast or wrapping up on a brisk autumn day for a hot chocolate and a wander around one of the many local nature parks.
I’m naturally curious. I love books, music and conversations that make me reflect. I’m sensitive, deeply empathic and someone who notices the subtleties — in people, relationships and the world around me. Those qualities are part of who I am both in and outside the therapy room.
Ready to take the first step?
If you feel like we might be a good fit to work together, I would love to hear from you.