About Me

Everything we do involves psychology; the natural techniques we use to develop our strengths and ways we learn to surpass our weaknesses has been an interest of mine since high school. By watching others gaining their characteristics and personal skills I have been gravitated towards psychology ever since. . Being a student in VKV Koc High School in İstanbul gave me such a confidence and belief in myself as well as an eagerness to read about various topics in psychology and follow the recent publications in psychology.

I am originally from Istanbul, Turkey. After graduating from VKV Koc High School, İstanbul, I went on to complete a psychology degree at Koc University and graduated in 1999. I furthered my academic career by completing a Masters Programme in Psychology at Maltepe University in 2006 in Istanbul. I started my professional career in 2000 at VKV Koc Elementary School as a counsellor where I worked for seven years until 2007. Deciding to advance my academic achievements I completed a Masters Programme in Psychoanalytic Child Development at the Anne Freud Centre at University College London in 2010.

Following the completion of my masters I established my own business in London, namely, ‘Dream Life Coaching’ and run it full time. Alongside my full time career I am volunteer for ‘Women’s Platform UK’ (a charity which aims to aid the needs of disadvantaged women) since 2008, for which I have done several workshops and seminars based on various topics as depression, childhood development, immigrants adapting to life in the UK for the last four years. As a member of the organisation I have also been a guest speaker on the London Turkish Radio and on various television channels speaking about subjects of interest to the Turkish community.

My fields of work includes marriage and family therapy, couples therapy, parenting, child development, career counselling, life coaching and NLP. I have attended various specialized courses in Birkbeck College and Tavistock and Portman Clinic in London. I have also received training in life coaching which is advantageous for my clients and have attended seminary courses at Birkbeck University, Tavistock and Portman Clinic. I have written a chapter called ‘The pre-school child and father’ in the book ‘The Pre-school Child and...’ (2011) edited by Prof. Dr. Mücella Ormanoğlu and written by Gülçin Karadeniz. Since 2007, I am a columnist for the newspaper Haber and Olay which are published in London and write for the Turkish newspaper Radikal about exhibitions and various art events alongside other fields of interests.

As I was working in Istanbul in VKV. Koc Elementary School as a counsellor, I had the opportunity to work closely with parents and children aged from 6 to 15. I had the chance to learn about the development of children and their needs. Working as a counsellor also enabled me to learn about parenting, the important issues about different types of families, their attitude to their children, different types of parenting which were the main topics I was concentrating upon as a counsellor. During the same working years, I also had the chance to work closely with the concept of ‘divorce’ and its effect on children and on the couples. While working on this concept, I had to concentrate mainly on issues like depression, anxiety and stress as most of the couples would go through some of these issues.

During that time, I felt the need to concentrate more on family concepts and realized that one should see the family as a unit and especially while working with the children, the whole family should be taken into consideration. Thus, I started my training in ‘Systemic Approach on Family and Marriage Therapy’ in 2000 which lasted for four years. During this training, I also had the chance to learn about creative dramatization as well which enabled me to work more closely with parents.

While I was working as a counsellor, doing my masters degree in Maltepe University provided me with an extensive knowledge about clinical psychology, child and adolescent psychology and parenting. I wrote my thesis about fatherhood, conducted a research in the area and could successfully had my Masters degree.My experience in Istanbul working as a counsellor and a family therapist encouraged me to start my degree in UCL. While doing my MSc in UCL, I had the great opportunity, time, resources and tutors that helped me to learn the depths of psychodynamic developmental psychology. Enriching my studies with the voluntary projects for the immigrant women broadened up my horizons to a great extend. I realized that especially having the time to focus on learning, observing and internalizing the concepts helped met o understand the whole picture of psychology in great depth.

After graduating from UCL in 2010, I am currently doing my PHD in Regents Univeristy about mindfulness. Mindfulness is a great topic which is mainly used for the treatment of depression and anxiety. Focusing on mindfulness and doing my research in this area is giving me the knowledge to update and enrich myself in terms of forming a holistic and integrative approach to be able to apply to my clients.