Southern Voice with a Northern Soul, By Stuart Walker

"I never set out to become a counsellor. Who really has the time to do things like that, especially when you are creeping towards middle age and you have a family, a job, and all the usual demands of life?

Even so, something kept pulling me towards it. The idea initially grew out of the coaching and mentoring work I had done across private and public industries, and it stayed with me until I could no longer ignore it. That calling is what eventually shaped my approach, a southern voice that would one day find its rhythm with a northern soul.

I grew up in the South, with a long-standing love and hate relationship with Charlton Athletic, where I can find myself sometimes psychoanalysing why a certain player might not seemingly be able to trap a bag of cement or kick a ball in a simple straight line, but mostly I remind myself that this is not the time or the place.

It makes me smile because it reminds me of the assumptions people often make when they hear I am a counsellor, some with an expectation for me to have an answer for everything. I often get asked what I think about someone’s dreams, whether I can tell what they are thinking, or if I am analysing them right there on the spot, but I always give the same response, therapy is not about judging or diagnosing from a distance, it's about being present with someone, listening closely, and working together to make sense of what matters most to them.

Life has a way of taking you further than you expect, and my path eventually led me north, and today, Manchester is home. It is where I am building my practice, continuing my studies, and have a life rooted in the kind of work that feels worth doing.

Moving away from Kent, where I had lived all my life, was a leap, for not just me but all of us, but sometimes you have to do what feels right. It began as a northern European exploration of where we might end up, but we settled in England’s first industrialised city, Manchester.

The home of the Hacienda, floppy hats, and flared jeans, which probably gives away my age. It is also, of course, the home of endless rain. Yet in between the downpours, Manchester shines with resilience, graft, and community, and those qualities run through both the city and the people I meet in the counselling room.

The South shaped my voice, but Manchester has shaped my practice, which has left me feeling like sometimes I am an unusual mix, a southern voice with a northern soul, which feels like the truest way to describe not only who I am, but also the work I do.

I am currently studying for an MSc in Psychotherapy and Counselling, building on years of experience in the mental health field. Balancing academic work with private practice is not always easy, and there are days when the reading piles up, deadlines loom, and I wonder how it will all get done. What keeps me motivated is knowing how directly the theory connects back into practice, and every lecture, every essay, every late night of study feeds into the work I do with clients.

I see this as just one part of my ongoing learning, because in this work, you can never really know enough, right? I practise as an integrative humanistic counsellor with a focus on men’s mental health, bereavement, and postvention support after suicide. I also work for an organisation called AMPARO, who walk alongside those bereaved by suicide. These roles constantly remind me of the weight people carry, and of how important it is to create spaces where they can set that weight down, even for a little while.

My private work is mostly with Men, and fathers in particular, who are so often overlooked in conversations about mental health. They carry expectations about strength and silence that keep them out of the very rooms where healing happens. For many, the hardest part is not the therapy itself but crossing the threshold and allowing themselves permission to ask for help in the first place.

Grief is another area where silence runs deep. People often do not know where to begin, what words to use, or whether it is even safe to speak their loss out loud. For men, this can be compounded by cultural expectations that they stay strong for others. Grief then gets pushed down, hidden, or sometimes reshaped into anger or withdrawal. Yet grief is universal, and the need to share it is as old as humanity itself.

These two themes often overlap, especially in the context of suicide. Men experiencing grief after suicide can feel isolated not only by their pain but also by the silence around it. Sometimes it is unspoken because others are afraid to ask. Sometimes it is because the person themselves cannot find a starting point. Part of my work is creating spaces where these conversations can begin, gently, honestly, and without judgment.

This is the start of the story I want to share in writing, too. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that therapy is not about perfection. It is about honesty, presence, and the courage to keep talking.

And that is why I write."