Alumni profile 

Course studied: MA Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice

Shahna is an integrative psychotherapist and BACP Accredited Counsellor based in Eastbourne, working in private practice and online.

Before psychotherapy, I completed a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and worked across a range of frontline and community settings, including addiction recovery, mediation, social prescribing and criminal justice-related services, including police custody and youth offending settings. Those experiences deepened my interest in the complexity of human distress, resilience and relationships and strengthened my commitment to therapeutic work.

By the time I came to the MA in Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice at Bath Spa, I was already practising and wanted something that would deepen not only my clinical skills but also my thinking as a practitioner.

What particularly drew me to Bath Spa was the flexibility of the distance-learning format, the reflective ethos of the course and the opportunity to pursue specialist interests and research questions genuinely relevant to therapeutic practice. As a relatively newly practising therapist and single mother building a private practice, the distance-learning format made it possible to pursue postgraduate study alongside professional and family life. That flexibility proved invaluable, allowing me to engage in postgraduate learning without stepping away from either my clinical work or family responsibilities.

Looking back, the MA became much more than an additional qualification. It gave me space to think critically, develop greater self-awareness and engage with research in a way that not only strengthened my confidence as a practitioner but also helped me reflect more deeply on the kind of therapist I was becoming.

That freedom became incredibly important to me. Across the course I found myself exploring themes around ethics, therapeutic relationships, technology, online practice and the emotional realities of being a therapist. Looking back, the MA became much more than an additional qualification. It gave me space to think critically, develop greater self-awareness and engage with research in a way that not only strengthened my confidence as a practitioner but also helped me reflect more deeply on the kind of therapist I was becoming.

The experience of studying at Bath Spa and the support I received on the course developed my thinking in ways that went far beyond gaining an academic qualification. It encouraged me to think more critically and tolerate greater complexity, particularly around therapist vulnerability, ethics and what sustainable practice really looks like. I found myself moving away from more fixed or binary ideas and becoming increasingly interested in nuance, context and reflective inquiry.

The course also deepened my understanding of use-of-self, helping me recognise it not as something static or already resolved, but as an ongoing ethical and reflective process requiring awareness, containment and continued personal work. 

That experience strengthened me not only as a practitioner, but as someone able to question, write and think more independently and creatively about the profession.

Nataliya's supervision, alongside the wider learning environment, offered a genuinely supportive and intellectually expansive space in which to think. Her warmth, relatability and encouragement helped create a supervisory relationship where I felt able to reflect openly, think beyond more immediate assumptions and develop greater confidence in my own ideas and voice. That experience strengthened me not only as a practitioner, but as someone able to question, write and think more independently and creatively about the profession, while the supervisory process gave me space to think from both within and beyond the profession at once.

It has also encouraged me to develop my own voice through writing and public reflection in ways I had not anticipated before beginning the MA. Beyond the writing itself, the process has been deeply reflective and at times personally revealing.

The course and research also deepened my understanding of what it means to identify with the wounded healer construct. I had always recognised aspects of myself within that idea, but the research encouraged me to examine it more critically and honestly. Through therapy, reflexive work and the dissertation process itself, I became more aware of the complex and sometimes unconscious motivations that can accompany helping professions and the importance of understanding and reflecting upon my own wounds rather than assuming they had been fully resolved or no longer shaped my experience.

That process was both challenging and transformative. It helped me move beyond a more romantic or simplified understanding of the wounded healer and towards a greater awareness of therapeutic presence, boundaries and ethical use of self. Rather than seeing woundedness as something either overcome or hidden, I came to understand it as something requiring ongoing reflection, awareness and containment.

In many ways, this allowed me to recalibrate. It strengthened my capacity to notice when my own history, feelings or vulnerabilities might be activated in the work.