June Brereton

I am a recently retired psychotherapist and trainer in Transactional Analysis, widowed seven years ago after thirty years with my late husband. I am now in a new relationship with Brian, a widower whom I met three and a half years ago, having very daringly found him through an internet dating agency. We married in September of last year. Between us we have three children and six grandchildren. It has been a wonderful new beginning for both of us. Neither envisaged falling in love again at sixty years old but we feel lucky to have found happiness for a second time. After having my daughter at twenty I found it within me, despite having an awful childhood, to a follow a path of self development. I enhanced my career prospects by opting for further education, eventually training as a Registered nurse, Health Visitor and Counsellor. After twenty five years in the Health Service I decided to train as a psychotherapist in 1987, qualifying in 1993. This of course involved me doing huge amounts of personal therapy and professional development along the way. Up to my retirement this year I have been a psychotherapist for almost twenty years I have extensive experience as therapist in my field, working with all aspects of the human condition including eating disorders, relationship issues, marriage counselling, physical and sexual abuse, self esteem, loss and grief, along with many and varied attachment issues and importantly, body issues.

I decided to write a book about the personal struggle of compulsive eating and dieting because it was something I know a lot about, my journey on this path has been a long and painful one, indeed it is not over yet. Much has been written about healthy eating, many and varied diets are ‘out there’ for us, but as yet I have not found anything suitable which looks back into how we came to be this way. Where did it start? How or why do we do the things we do to ourselves in order to ‘lose weight’? Why do we have such a struggle in our relationship with food? We either see food as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ or we see ourselves as ‘bad or good’.

Having worked with all the problems that life can bring throughout my career as a therapist, and I do believe that many are symptoms of a basic cause and believe that we cannot cure anything within ourselves without taking a look into our past history and linking the past with the present.

Even though we cannot change the past we can change our attitude towards it.