Pamela Gawler-Wright

Pamela Gawler-Wright MSc is a UKCP Accredited Psychotherapist. She is co-founder of BeeLeaf Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and has developed the field of Contemporary Psychotherapy over the last 25 years.  Qualified by UKCP in two different modalities herself, Pam has trained with some of the outstanding outcome oriented Psychotherapists of our day including Ernest L. Rossi, Stephen Gilligan, Michael Yapko, Bill O’Hanlon, Frank Farrelly, Christine Padesky and the co-creators of Systemic Neuro-Linguistics, Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier. Pam has been a Psychotherapy Clinical Trainer  for the UKCP qualifying pathway since 1994.

Starting out her career working in end-of-life care and bereavement, Pam worked as a Psychotherapist at an AIDS/HIV+ service in London’s King’s Cross. Here she developed a commitment for improving psychotherapeutic service for people, partners and families suffering with dependency on drugs and alcohol. Training programs in this area began to be delivered by BeeLeaf in 1997 and in 2000 Pam was appointed as Clinical Supervisor for Barking and Havering Alcohol Advisory Service and for James Cooke House. Here she met the late Bill Cairns and together they developed an holistic and practical program and ethos to aid sustainable recovery. This work continues and forms part of the BeeLeaf Advanced Clinical Applications training for practicing psychotherapists, and is ground-breaking in offering a bio-psycho-socio-eco-deo model for addressing the complex and connected systems of trauma, addiction and anxiety/depression. These courses have prepared hundreds of practitioners from a wide range of modalities to work with more awareness and effectiveness with these sufferers and to support the recovery of lives worth living.

The Contemporary Psychotherapy ethos as formalised at BeeLeaf in 2004 with the inception of the Community for Contemporary Psychotherapy and the field continues to build and flourish with the ever-growing input of the amazing BeeLeaf graduates. The Contemporary Psychotherapy model promotes creativity as being a natural part of being human and an essential force to living fully with courage and authenticity. Many pioneering individuals who have brought their own original body of work to the field of psychotherapy got their start at BeeLeaf  and ‘Contemporary Psychotherapist’ is now a recognised descriptor of UKCP psychotherapies as well as gaining many exponents abroad. Contemporary Psychotherapy has expanded into general and specific areas of human growth and healing, improving effective applications in areas such as recovery from trauma, depression, anxiety, addiction and dependence, couples, sex and relationships, inclusion and diversity, especially in areas of gender and sexual diversity.

Pam is particularly known for her exposition of Ericksonian Psychotherapeutic principles and is a celebrated story teller and pioneer in pairing the recovery process to the release and development of the creativity process. As well as releasing the natural self-balancing human system of emotional and psychological recovery, Pam’s work as a Psychotherapist and Trainer has supported many successful artists and creatives across a range of job sectors to better mental health, productivity and greater professional success.

This creative passion has brought Pam much success in building original and influential models that encapsulate complex ideas and applications and make them easily accessible to be used by clients and professionals alike. Some of these include Wider Mind, Continuous Becoming, For F’s Sake, S.O.S. Trauma Recovery and The Three I’ed Monster addressing whole person and whole brain psychotherapy for clients presenting with trauma, anxiety, depression, bereavement, addiction, co-dependence and for clients of gender and sexual diversity.

Over the years Pam has served in several posts supporting the growth and standards of psychotherapy practice and training.  She was External Moderator of UK Association of Transactional Analysis (2011 – 2017), Ethics Committee Member UKCP (2006 – 2013) Diversity and Equality Committee Member UKCP (2009 – 2014), Education Training and Practice Committee Member UKCP (2012 – 2018). In 2011 she became a Clinical Associate for Pink Therapy and a core trainer on their International Training in Essentials in Working with Gender and Sexual Diversities and is a guest trainer on other accredited psychosexual trainings. She has contributed to many of UKCP’s guidelines in Ethics and in Training Standards. Between 2009 and 2018 Pam was a leading figure in writing and implementing the organisation-wide Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy 2017.

Pam is a highly sought after speaker as her presentations capture the imaginations of audiences and inspire very personal insight and motivation for congruent change in people and communities. She has shared platforms with Nobel Prize winners and presented in many countries. Just some of the diverse organisations Pam has spoken for over the years include iMed, Relate, British Association of Sexual Medicine, Institute of Transactional Analysis, United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, Pink Therapy, Association of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Rape Crisis, Association for Christian Counsellors, Gay and Lesbian Association of Doctors and Dentists, British Psychotherapy Foundation and Confer. Her training is renowned for being creative, fun, challenging and highly experiential within a safe environment, bringing together tremendously diverse groups into harmonious and uplifting shared experience. She continues to train for BeeLeaf Institute and several other psychotherapy and medical training schools, as well as for community and organisational training including Royal Bank of Scotland and Rolls Royce.

Her original bodies of work have been broadcast to psychology professionals and Psychotherapists across Europe, and as far as Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and North America. Pam has recorded two published CDs of therapeutic storytelling which address dependence issues, self esteem and anxiety through creative cultivation of emotional self-awareness, resilience, self-fulfilment and reality based optimism. Her writings have been published in many trade and other publications, including a series of interviews with some of the leading Ericksonian Psychotherapists of our time. Her work has also been featured in “Therapy Today”, “The Psychotherapist” and “The Huffington Post” and she is a frequent radio commentator.

Pam continues to run a busy East End of London psychotherapy practice and continues to push the boundaries of current psychotherapeutic understanding to serve more clients better.