About Michelle Goldsmith, MS, MBACP, MNCPS(Acc)
Somatic & Relational Psychotherapist in Huddersfield, Online Across the UK & Internationally
I came to psychotherapy through the body. I trained first as a dance/movement therapist at Pratt Institute in New York, then in psychotherapy and counselling at the University of Leeds. Both trainings are still present in the room — I pay attention not only to what you're saying but to what your body is doing while you say it, and what it does when you stop.
Before retraining, my work as a dance/movement therapist was in inpatient psychiatry, addiction, and with neurodivergent children — settings where language was often unavailable, and the body was the primary communication.
I've worked in mental health across the US and UK for over a decade. I have taught on the MA Psychotherapy programme at the University of Leeds. I work largely with the kinds of transitions that require you to become someone slightly different than you were.
How I work
Often, current loss touches older ones. Something you thought you'd moved past becomes present again — not because you're going backwards, but because what's happening now has stirred something that wasn't finished. Part of the work is learning to listen to what's being brought forward, and why it’s coming to surface now.
That might sit alongside the more immediate and practical: how you're sleeping, how you're functioning at work, what feels suddenly impossible. All of this is welcome.
Sessions are largely unstructured. I follow what you bring rather than directing it unless a particular need for structure is clear. Some of what I attend to is what you say, and some of it is where you tighten, where you trail off, what your body does in the pauses. Some of the deepest work is about what’s happening in our relationship as a mirror or insight to your other relationships.
Where it's useful, I draw on movement, image, and writing alongside talking. When clients already have a creative medium, we don't set it aside. What someone makes, how they make it, and what they can't bring themselves to make often holds material that conversation hasn't reached yet. I may offer a somatic or movement practice to try, something to work with in the session or take away. Guided somatic work is always offered in the context of choice.
Education & Professional Registration
My core qualifications are a Postgraduate Diploma in Psychotherapy and Counselling from the University of Leeds and an MS in Creative Arts Therapy in Dance and Movement from Pratt Institute, New York.
-
Postgraduate Diploma in Psychotherapy and Counselling — University of Leeds
Master of Science with Distinction in Dance/Movement Creative Arts Therapy — Pratt Institute, NYC
-
AEDP Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy Level 1
Grief Therapy Advanced Certification
Deb Dana’s Polyvagal-Informed Practitioner Training
Mixed and Multi-Racial Heritage in Therapy, Yvon Guest
LGBTQIA+ Affirmative Care
Somatic Therapies for Complex Trauma (CCTP-II) — Arielle Schwartz, Abi Blakeslee, and Janina Fisher
Trauma Treatment Certification Training (CCTP-I) — Janina Fisher
Diploma in Diversity, Cultural Competence, Race, and Anti-Discrimination in Therapeutic Practice, The AntiDiscrimination Focus
Black Feminism and Womanism: Therapeutic Perspectives — Claudia Coussins, Feminist Therapy Network
Birthing from a Trans Perspective — Jacob Stokoe, Make Birth Better
-
Accredited Registrant — National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS)
Registered Member — British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP)
-
Guest Presenter on Intersubjectivity, Embodied Resonance and Reflexive Writing at University of Leeds MA Psychotherapy & Counselling course
Radical Resonance, Queer Embodiment, Co-regulation, and Femifesto – This past workshop brought together somatic practice, movement, breath and writing to explore how the body carries, resists and reclaims stories.
Participants explored gesture, sensation, rhythm, memory and the traces of their own queer bodies moving through time and space. The workshop considered how embodied experience can speak back to dominant cultural narratives, and how creative practice can challenge the boundaries between the personal and the political, the physical and the intellectual, the self and the collective.
If you'd like to explore working together, you're very welcome to get in touch.