Born and brought up in Guernsey (neé
Bihet), I initially qualified as a general nurse in 1981 (Dorset), then as a
mental health nurse in 1985 (Exeter). I have worked mostly in adult acute mental
health settings, using a variety of psychotherapeutic techniques, in individual
and group work. I have additional practitioner-level qualifications in
Cognitive Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Meridian Energy Therapies, and Eye-Movement
Desensitisation & Reprocessing (EMDR), and I have also completed courses in
Solution Focused Therapy, Life Coaching, and Colour Therapy.
Within my practice of Cognitive Therapy (CBT), I use
techniques and ideas from Acceptance & Commitment Therapy,
Mindfulness based approaches, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Schema Therapy, Multimodal Therapy,
and imagery techniques. I am also influenced by the writings and work of
Milton Erickson and
Viktor Frankl.
I'm married to Malcolm, and have three
children ranging from 3 to 21 years of age. I enjoy reading, cycling,
music, visiting France, and making websites!
Carol Vivyan RMN, RGN, Dip Cognitive Therapy (Soton), D.Hyp,
GQHP
About this website
This website started out as "mindinfo.co.uk"
in 1999 primarily for in-patients of Albecq Ward and other service users at the
Castel Hospital in Guernsey where I was working. Service users often asked
me where they could find information about various conditions or treatment.
I developed a list of relevant websites, but I finally decided it would be far
easier to direct them to one webpage, which contained the links to all those
other sites. So "mindinfo" was born. The website has grown steadily
over the years, and was rebranded as "get.gg" in 2008 when Mind (the UK national
mental health charity) requested that I change the name of the site. I
used that opportunity to completely overhaul the site to reflect the changes in
my own knowledge and skills, primarily CBT.
PS The picture at the top of this page is a copy of a
painting (by Molly Bihet, my Mum) from a photograph of me on my then boat, off
Dartmouth, in 1984. 'Delphinus' was a Morgan Giles 30, built in 1975 and
completed in 1978. I taught sailing for two seasons, based in Dartmouth,
and later sailed her most often single-handedly around local Channel Island
waters.
