Gwen Williams

Gwen Williams is an experienced analytic and mindfulness therapist who brings over two decades of clinical and personal experience to her role at Nightingale Hospital. She supports individuals facing a range of emotional and psychological challenges including bereavement, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), postnatal depression, stress, interpersonal difficulties, and panic attacks. Gwen works with multiple therapeutic approaches including psychotherapy, counselling, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), and well-being therapies.

At Nightingale Hospital, she facilitates a weekly mindfulness-awareness group as part of the general therapy programme and occasionally leads interpersonal therapy groups. She also co-convenes the eight-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy course and offers individual therapy tailored to patients’ specific mental health concerns.

Before joining Nightingale Hospital, Gwen worked at City Hackney Mind for sixteen years as a psychotherapist, and most recently as the Clinical Services Manager for Psychological and Wellbeing Services. In this role, she provided clinical supervision to professional staff including counsellors and psychotherapists, overseeing care for complex issues such as early childhood trauma, addiction, domestic violence, self-esteem challenges, parenting difficulties, and a range of mental health conditions. She also worked as Day Centre Manager at Islington Mind, helping to develop and run a crisis telephone counselling service, and as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Women’s Therapy Centre for six years. She was also the resident therapist at the Lambo African-Caribbean Day Centre.

Her therapeutic approach is grounded in psychoanalytical and object-relational frameworks while integrating mindfulness-based practices. Gwen fosters a collaborative and client-centred environment, believing that the psychotherapeutic relationship is central to effective therapy. She encourages patients to build awareness of how past experiences shape current behaviours and relationships, aiming to support personal insight and change. She is especially interested in the impact of attachment issues, early life trauma, adoption, loss, separation, and the role of shame.

Alongside her clinical practice, Gwen has taught mindfulness in schools and across the voluntary and private sectors. She was lead teacher for a 2013 City University research study on mindfulness and its effects on body awareness, perception, and psychological well-being. In 2015, she contributed as a guest teacher during the launch of the Centre for Psychological Wellbeing & Neuroscience at City University and was involved in the All-Party Parliamentary Group consultations for the Mindful Nation UK report.

Gwen adheres to the UK Network of Mindfulness-Based Teachers Good Practice guidelines and maintains ongoing professional development through the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice and the Oxford Mindfulness Centre. Her therapeutic style is characterised by flexibility, openness, and respect, and she prioritises the exploration of internal experience as a pathway to healing.