Alice de Villiers

Alice de Villiers is a Clinical Psychologist, who moved to the United Kingdom in 2010, following the completion of her training in South Africa. Alice’s training was psychodynamic in nature and embedded in Attachment and Object Relations Theory. This training has been augmented and supplemented through Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, Imago Relationship Theory and Mindfulness Skills. Alice has worked in inpatient, Private Sector, Community and specialist NHS and private practice settings over her 15-year career.

Alice’s clinical research focussed on the theories of trauma and the impact of vicarious exposure to crime in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her knowledge and experience evolved from this point, with experience gained through extensive work with the survivors of trauma. Through the development of a biopsychosocial understanding of lived experiences and the development and implementation of management strategies to reduce the effects of trauma on functioning. Successful outcomes range from the prevention and resolution of relationship stress and tension to the attainment of occupational satisfaction and in certain cases to the prevention of each of self-harm, suicidal ideation and incarceration.

Alice believes that once our distress is reduced and a narrative is both compassionately formed and subsequently accepted, we can make an informed decision about the extent to which pre-existing dynamics retain their usefulness to us, and, as a consequence of this choice, the need to adapt them, if at all.

Alice’s expanding knowledge and passion for the Compassion-Focused Therapy Framework arises from her belief in the opportunity it offers for a values based and containing formulation together with its practical and holistic techniques that generously allow space for the appropriate use of other models to personalise strategies, with the aim of reducing the internal and interpersonal friction that inevitably arise in periods of change and growth.