Caitlin Buon

Therapist Directory Listing Category: Psychotherapists and Counsellors

About the Therapist

About the therapist:

My practice as a therapist began in Australia some 35 years ago having come from a background in social justice and community development working within a wide range of contexts with individuals, families, groups, and organizations. This breadth of experience in social justice was profoundly important in shaping my approach to psychotherapy.

Some of my roles in Australia included:

Psychotherapist, trainer and facilitator in private practice
Executive Director of a network of alcohol and other drug counselling and rehabilitation services in the community sector
Director of a charity organization advocating for people with an acquired brain injury and their families
Family Mediator
Workplace Mediator specializing in discrimination and harassment
Investigator with a state Government Ombudsman

After moving to Scotland in 2001 I co-established a specialist consultancy in conflict resolution, training, and conducting external workplace investigations of discrimination and harassment in large organizations and government departments.

I returned to full-time practice as a Psychotherapist in 2010 and completed further training as a Psychodrama Psychotherapist. During this period I also worked as a sessional group therapist with the Priory Hospital in North London while also completing extensive ongoing training in developing my specialist practice in complex trauma and dissociation.

Sexual identity:

Heterosexual

Gender identity: Female

Gender history: As assigned at birth

Non-monogamy: No

Intersex: No

Neurodivergent: No

Personal pronouns: she/her

Qualifications - Links to websites:

2015 Advanced Diploma in Psychodrama Psychotherapy (Psychodynamic and Attachment-Based), Birmingham Institute for Psychodrama

UKCP: https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/therapist/Caitlin-Buon-iAkLNAA0

BACP: https://www.bacp.co.uk/therapists/117624/caitlin-buon/melrose-td6

Qualifications - Additional:

Award	Awarding body	Year of award
Higher Certificate in Creative Action Methods in Individual and Group Psychotherapy (person-Centred)	Northern School of Psychodrama, Scotland	2014
International Certification as Team Leader in Trauma Therapy using the Therapeutic Spiral Model (Psychodrama),	Dr Kate Hudgins TSI International, Virginia USA	2014
Bachelor of Science (Physiology)	Macquarie University, Sydney Australia	2000
Certification in Narrative Therapy I, II, III	Dulwich Centre, Adelaide Australia	1994-1996

Experience and approach:

My approach is to work with each person’s unique experience and way of making meaning about their life. I work in a collaborative, co-creative and compassionate way that respects each person’s autonomy and wisdom to know or discover what they need. It is not my role to diagnose or pathologize a person’s experience. Rather it is to accompany the people I work alongside, with a focus on how the person experiences themselves, others and their lifeworld.

I am committed to what Johnella Bird (2003) has described as the 'development of processes where discovery is privileged' over and above a strict adherence to the 'structural boundaries produced by models'. I have evolved an approach that draws on ideas and practices that support this process and especially from narrative, psychodramatic and attachment-based therapies.

The other critical aspect of my way of being as a therapist is in giving space to knowing and naming how the use of power in a person's life has created or contributed to their happiness, situation or suffering. For me, a great deal of a person's suffering, my own included, is entirely understandable where power has been used to marginalize a person and 'other' them. Issues around social justice are therefore central to my understanding of the ongoing process in becoming a person and a therapist.

Approaches: