Mandy
Atkinson
TSTA (P), CTA (P), UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and Supervisor,
Senior Accredited BACP psychotherapist
Hello and a warm welcome. I’m Mandy Atkinson. I am a UKCP registered psychotherapist and supervisor, and a Senior Accredited BACP psychotherapist. My work with eating, body and weight builds on substantial clinical experience as a psychotherapist, supervisor and teacher of therapists and other professionals.
For more than 16 years, I have specialised in work with eating, body and weight issues, including disordered eating and eating disorders. Over that time, I have provided psychotherapy to many people who have experienced psychological distress when their relationship with eating, their body or their weight has become difficult, painful or overwhelming. I work with a wide range of disordered-eating and eating-disorder issues, including obesity, anorexia, bulimia, emetophobia and body dysmorphia. I also work with psychological distress around food, body and eating.
I have always lived in a larger body and bring that lived perspective to my clinical work. It sits alongside my professional training, clinical experience, sensitivity to the shame-evoking nature of this highly specialist work, and an ongoing commitment to lifelong learning. I am interested in the ways that personal experience, relationships, shame and the wider social meanings attached to eating, bodies and weight can shape a person’s life.
A relational way of working
My work is relational: I believe that change is supported through a respectful, thoughtful and sensitive therapeutic relationship in which people can begin to make sense of their life experience. I believe that eating, disordered eating and eating disorders are linked to much more than eating behaviour, body size or a diagnosis. I see every eating presentation as unique. I work with the complexity and multiple meanings that eating, body and weight may hold, and the impact they may have had.
I am passionate about this field of work. Alongside my clinical practice, I provide specialist supervision for practitioners working with eating, body and weight issues and disorders. I teach, train, write and contribute to professional and academic conversations in this area.
Supervision experience
I have been supervising for more than nine years and hold two qualifications related to supervision: Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (Psychotherapy) [TSTA (P)] and a Diploma in Relational Supervision of Individuals and Groups.
My specialist experience includes providing individual and group supervision to counsellors, psychologists and psychotherapists who want dedicated supervision in work with eating, body and weight. My supervision is relational, compassionate, thoughtful and attentive to the complexity of this work, including the ways that shame, personal experience and the wider social context can enter the therapeutic relationship.
I invite therapists to think deeply about their clinical work, develop confidence in their practice, whilst deepening their understanding.
The Nourish Framework
The Nourish Framework evolved from my clinical experience, research and sustained thinking about how to work relationally with people experiencing disordered eating and eating disorders. Drawing on empirical research from my own clinical work, it brings together a structural and relational Transactional Analysis methodology, attending to shame and to the wider context in which eating, shape and weight are understood.
My article, Nourish: A Framework for Nourishing Eating-Disordered Clients Using a Structural and Relational Methodology, was published in the Transactional Analysis Journal in 2023. The beginnings of my thinking about how to approach working with eating, body and weight are set out in the Nourish Framework.
Teaching experience
I originally trained as a teacher in 2002. In addition to my TSTA qualification, I hold two teaching qualifications and have been teaching for more than 24 years. I worked for many years as a teacher and senior lecturer at the University of Greenwich Business School, where I undertook research focused on students’ experience of learning. I remain curious about how people learn and the many dimensions of learning. When I changed profession and trained as a Transactional Analyst and psychotherapist, I see teaching as a craft. I particularly enjoy teaching experientially and creatively.
Qualifications and professional membership
- TSTA (P) — Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (Psychotherapy)
- CTA (P) — Certified Transactional Analyst (Psychotherapy)
- UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and Supervisor
- Senior Accredited BACP psychotherapist
- Master of Arts (MA) Strategic Marketing
- Diploma in Relational Supervision of Individuals and Groups
- Diploma in Humanistic Counselling
- Certificate in Education (Cert Ed)
- Certificate in E-Learning, Teaching and Training (CeLTT)
- Registered General Nurse (RGN)