About Me

Elaine Nicholson MBE

Body Psychotherapist and Autism-Specialist Counsellor

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I am a clinically accredited body psychotherapist registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP registration no: 2011166457), having completed an intensive eight-year training programme at the Cambridge Body Psychotherapy Centre, which culminated in my accreditation in Summer 2025.

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Concurrently, I maintain a practice as an autism-specialist counsellor, grounded in scholarly research and clinical innovation. In 2010, I completed a master's degree that involved developing and evaluating a neurodivergence-informed counselling model specifically designed for individuals navigating life with Asperger's syndrome. This theoretical and practical work subsequently informed my establishment of Action for Neurodiversity (UK Charity Registration no: 1148790), an organisation within which all clinical practitioners operated according to the evidence-based model I had developed.

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The distinctive feature of this model centres on attending to clients' somatic and sensory experience—specifically, inviting clients to actively shape the therapeutic environment in ways that optimise their felt sense of embodied wellbeing during sessions. This fundamental emphasis on the body's wisdom and the client's agency in constructing their therapeutic context resonated profoundly with body psychotherapy theory and praxis, prompting my decision to undertake formal training at the Cambridge Body Psychotherapy Centre in 2017.

My training constituted a rigorous, multifaceted exploration of somatic psychology theory, embodied practice, and personal psychodynamic work. This journey was personally motivated by a desire to reconcile my relationship with my own body following a surgical complication in 2005 that precipitated ongoing fibromyalgia—experiences which have themselves become generative in my clinical work and capacity for authentic presence with clients.

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Through my training and sustained personal psychotherapeutic engagement, I have cultivated both professional competence and personal integration. I bring this hard-won wisdom to my clinical practice, committed to facilitating similar experiences of embodied peace and psychological coherence for those I work with therapeutically.

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Accreditation Details:

• UKCP Member no: 2011166457

• BACP Register no: 145760