About
Bo Bloomfield is a senior accredited practitioner with 28 years’ unbroken practice working with children, adolescents and adults. She has worked in the education sector, providing therapy to clients at primary and secondary school, and at college and university. Bo has also worked for 10 years in the NHS and for the last 25 years in private practice. Bo has experience of working therapeutically with a diverse range of clinical issues, with both short-term and long-term clinical contracts. Bo has undertaken work for several employee assistance programmes (EAPs) and understands issues pertaining to workplace therapy. Currently, Bo works as a freelance therapist providing therapy to clinical staff within the NHS. In the past, Bo has worked for Relate – undertaking counselling in their young people’s service, working with 11 to 18 year olds, as well as co-facilitating therapeutic groups for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Bo is also trained in working with couples. Since 2011, Bo has provided clinical supervision to individuals and groups, and this has included staff engaged in a broad spectrum of work, including social services staff, staff working for Mind, trainee counsellors studying for diploma level and MA qualifications across the country, as well as therapists offering online therapy to school-age children across the UK. Bo has provided group supervision to counsellors working with bereaved children for Cruse and for a project working with young people at risk of sexual exploitation. Bo provides online appointments, having completed a certificate in the provision of online and telephone counselling.
Bo is particularly interested in and has experience of working therapeutically with trauma. Bo is an eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) accredited practitioner, having completed the EMDR Europe standard accredited training with the EMDR Academy and having gained accredited status with the EMDR UK Association. EMDR is an approach that can be helpful in working with a wide range of mental health issues and with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in particular. EMDR can help people to recover from distressing life events and the problems they have caused, for example, flashbacks, upsetting thoughts or images, depression or anxiety. EMDR is recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a treatment for PTSD, and the World Health Organisation (WHO), which also recognises it as an effective treatment for adults and children.
When using EMDR, there is a preparation stage where Bo and the client will prepare for the work together, and a processing stage where bilateral stimulation is used to help process disturbing memories, thoughts and feelings. Bilateral stimulation refers to sensory stimuli, such as sounds, tapping, and eye movement that activate both sides of the brain. This can soothe and calm the client’s nervous system, enhancing the client’s access to positive images, thoughts, emotions and body sensations. During a therapy session, Bo may instruct the client to use their eyes to follow her fingers, and a client may be instructed to pat their own shoulders or knees with their hands, alternating between their left and right sides while following Bo’s pace. Bilateral stimulation can provide a new tool for people to process and recover from traumatic events. Here, the client practises how to regulate their own body, and in this way can be enabled to gain distance from and change their perspective of the original trauma. Bilateral stimulation in EMDR therapy can help clients alleviate distressing emotional and physiological symptoms. The number of sessions needed will depend on the type and severity of the trauma that has been experienced.
Bo has also undertaken further specialist training in the flash technique (FT). This is an evidence-based therapeutic intervention for reducing the disturbance associated with traumatic or other distressing memories. FT is a complementary approach to EMDR and can be used to reduce the level of disturbance associated with painful and traumatic life events by having the client focus on a positive engaging thought. In contrast to many conventional trauma therapy interventions, FT is a minimally intrusive option that doesn’t require the client to consciously engage with the traumatic memory. This allows the client to process traumatic memories without feeling high levels of distress, and therefore minimises emotional impact and any potential feelings of overwhelm. Bo has also completed training in attachment-focused EMDR (AF-EMDR) which is a specialised approach to EMDR that targets early relational trauma including childhood attachment wounds, emotional neglect, developmental trauma, abuse, disassociation and complex PTSD. This approach modifies the standard 8-phase EMDR protocol and utilises attachment theory. AF-EMDR emphasises emotional and somatic regulation through building internal resources to ensure the client can manage distress, pacing is adapted to the client’s nervous system and relational repair, and focuses on the therapist being an active regulating presence to build trust.
Additionally, Bo is trained in deep brain reorienting (DBR). DBR is a scientifically based, transformational trauma psychotherapy developed by Dr Frank Corrigan. DBR focuses on healing the shock at the core of traumatic experiences and uses trauma memory processing developed from an understanding of stimulus-response sequences in the upper brainstem. This approach diminishes the risk of overwhelm or dissociation. DBR can be helpful in working with attachment shock, attachment wounding and relational disturbances associated with early life adversity and childhood trauma. DBR often starts with present-day activations to provide treatment that is immediately relevant to the client’s quality of life. In essence, the aim of DBR is to access and facilitate the reprocessing of difficult or traumatic events at a deep level, working within the brainstem and neurobiological responses.
In a DBR session, Bo will guide the client to pay close attention to what is happening within their body, as this holds crucial information about how the body and nervous system has responded to difficult or traumatic events. This focus on the client’s physical experience is an important aspect of DBR as it enables the client to create a stronger connection between the mind and the body, which can facilitate a more holistic and integrated healing process. Given this, DBR doesn’t require the client to provide a detailed narrative of their life events and experiences. Instead, the primary focus is on observing any spontaneous bodily sensations, emotions or memories – however fleeting or subtle – and this enables processing to occur at a deep, pre-cognitive level of the brain. This approach can be especially helpful for addressing early relational or complex trauma where explicit memories might be fragmented, incomplete or difficult to access. Working at a slow and careful pace, Bo will help the client to pay attention to a natural sequence of responses that occurs when an overwhelming or traumatic event has been experienced. This careful focused attention enables the brain’s inherent healing process to occur at an organic level as the client is enabled to ‘reorient’ automatic responses so that reminders of past difficulties no longer trigger the same intense and often distressing responses.
Bo’s original training was in relational therapy, and she works from the fundamental belief that therapeutic change comes about through the systematic use of the therapeutic relationship. Her intention is to provide an interpersonally focused relationship, which both contains and holds the client work as the client’s goals are actively worked towards. The key task is to create an empowering alliance with the client by communicating the attitudes and skills of the person-centred approach. By creating a climate of warmth, trust, genuineness and respect, Bo’s attention and energy are firmly focused on the collaborative nature of the therapeutic relationship, since its quality determines overall effectiveness of the work. Bo uses the early counselling sessions to identify the client’s expectations, to agree a collaborative approach to the work, and to highlight the confidentiality boundaries. This provides an opportunity to agree a contract that stresses the client's autonomy and a shared understanding of the desired outcome goals. Bo’s respect for the autonomy of the client is paramount, and the narrative that a client brings – their own personal story – is held at the centre of the work. Through the process of active listening, she invites the client to tell their story, whatever that story might be. As a relational therapist, Bo’s approach is also informed by psychodynamic theory. She pays particular attention to attachment theory – how attachments are formed and sustained, and how fractures and breaches in relationships are repaired or maintained. By paying attention to what is being communicated in the relationship, she is attempting to be sensitive to and recognise the enduring relational themes in the client's presenting material. The relational model predicts that ways of relating learning in our earliest relationships will be played out in new relationships. Consequently, Bo is aware that old patterns experienced by the client may be re-played with her in the therapeutic space. Bo endeavours to use this experience as a therapeutic opportunity to encourage the client to recognise, challenge, and transform dysfunctional ways of relating.
Position at Priory
- EMDR Accredited Practitioner and DBR Therapist (Level 1 and 2 training)
- Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP) Psychotherapist and Clinical Supervisor
- EMDR UK Association Member
- BACP Senior Registered Accredited Practitioner
- BACP Accredited Practitioner
- UKRC Registered Independent Counsellor/Psychotherapist
Training
- Level 1 and Level 2 Certificate in DBR For Healing Emotional Shock, Attachment Wounding and Trauma, Dr Frank Corrigan, DBR
- Complex Trauma Certification Training Level 1 and Level 2 Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP1 and CCTP11), Janina Fisher and PESI
- Certificate in The FT for Trauma: Rapid Processing for Clinicians Using EMDR, Dr Mansfield and Dr Engel, PESI
- Certificate in AF-EMDR, Dr Laura Parnell, PESI
- EMDR Europe Standard Accredited Training, EMDR Therapist, EMDR Academy
- Certificate in Online and Telephone Counselling, Counselling Tutor
- Certificate in the Working with Couples, Leeds Psychotherapy Training Institute
- Diploma in the Practice of Supervision, Leeds Psychotherapy Training Institute
- Counselling Children, Young People and Adolescents, Relate
- Postgraduate Diploma in Psychological Therapies, Leeds Metropolitan University
- BSc (Hons) Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling (BACP-Accredited Course) Park Lane College and Leeds Metropolitan University Leeds
- Transactional Analysis 101 Certificate, Institute of Transactional Analysis
- AEB Certificate in Counselling Skills, Joseph Priestly College, Leeds
- PGCE, Dewsbury College
- Diploma of Higher Education in Social Policy & Administration, Leeds Metropolitan University