Christopher Tovey is currently studying a PhD in Adult Education and Lifelong Learning. He started his journey with CLL in 2008, when he studied on our BA in Person-Centred Counselling and Psychotheraphy.

A bit about Christopher...

Christopher is an independent counsellor and coach in private practice with fifty years of previous experience and professional development in care work, including advanced qualifications in continuing education, social work and psychotherapy. Christopher has been practising coaching and psychotherapy for the last ten years.

After voluntary early retirement from his last extremely stressful full-time post as social care services Inspector, he decided to retrain as a person-centred counsellor. He initially started a full-time Person-Centre Therapy Degree at Essex University and then moving on to study here at the Centre for Lifelong Learning and re-located from Colchester to Kenilworth.

At Warwick Christopher was awarded the Counselling and Psychotherapy Foundation Degree in 2011 and his BA Honours Degree in March 2014. Christopher has been providing counselling services as a Registered member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy working in private practice at home since September 2011.

Christopher has continued with further research work and substantial personal and professional development since then, and he has written numerous articles about the development of counselling, coaching and psychotherapy practice for professional journals and websites such as ‘Therapy friends’. He is now a founder member and consultant for Therapy Friends, which is focused on providing a forum for both therapists and health service users, promoting mental health and facilitating self-care and psychological wellbeing, and challenging stigma about mental illness.

In January 2019, at the age of 70, Christopher began a full-time research PhD here at CLL. The ongoing project is a qualitative narrative inquiry investigating the perspectives and experiences counselling service users. Christopher is interviewing volunteer research participants to discover how people in later-life describe the experiences which led to their request for consultation and how they evaluate their counselling process and outcomes.

Christopher's first school motto was "Vivas ut disce et disce ut vivas" : Live to learn and learn to live. Christopher is working hard to follow this instruction!

Articles, blogs and webinars

The medicalisation and commodification of distress - https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/memberarticles/the-medicalisation-and-commodification-of-distress

'The Myth of Sisyphus' - a personal account of Chris' ongoing PhD research experiences - https://cllwarwickblog.com/2021/05/11/the-myth-of-sisyphus/ 

'The world and I are within one another' - this describes Christopher's experiences of personal and professional development and his concerted efforts to influence thinking about counselling practice in recent years - http://kenilworthcounselling.co.uk/articles.html 

Christopher has his own YouTube channel and his most recent webinar entitled "Tales of Transition" is available to watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48cuaLU1ukE