Student Profile: Eunice

A graduate of our foundation and intermediate systemic courses, Eunice is now completing her Master’s Degree in Systemic Psychotherapy (M6) – embracing the reflexivity championed by the training.

When Eunice Alloh first discovered systemic psychotherapy, it gave a name to an idea she had been carrying for years.

Having trained in forensic psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy and counselling, Eunice spent more than a decade working in the prison service and other organisations. During that time, she began to question whether working with people individually was always enough to support lasting change.

She recalled speaking to people who had returned to prison after previously completing therapy and other interventions.

“I would ask, ‘Why are you back?’” says Eunice.

Their answer: “I learned the skills, but when I went home nothing else had changed.”

“The support system wasn’t there, family and friends had the same demands, and expectations, or weren’t equipped to help them implement what they had learned in their individual therapy sessions,” explains Eunice.

Those conversations reinforced Eunice’s belief that she wanted to work not only with individuals, but with the families, relationships and wider systems around people.

“I didn’t want to just do individual therapy,” she said. “I wanted to work with the whole system and help people understand how everything is connected and how everyone can make an impact,” says Eunice.

Turning point

A conversation with a clinical psychologist and mentor introduced Eunice to multisystemic therapy and led her to begin researching family therapy and systemic practice.

“What I was describing already existed,” she says. “I finally had a name for something that had been in my mind for a long time.”

That discovery marked the beginning of a five-year training journey at Tavistock Education and Training. Eunice completed the foundation and intermediate stages of systemic training before progressing to our Master’s Degree in Systemic Psychotherapy M6).

She completed her final lectures in June and is now preparing to submit her dissertation ahead of graduating next year.

While the course aligned with Eunice’s ambition to work with families and wider systems, the experience was not always what she had expected.

Showing up as your whole self

Coming from other forms of psychological training, she was accustomed to showing up as the expert.

Systemic training however asked her to examine her own experiences, assumptions and contribution to what was happening in the therapeutic relationship.

She was encouraged to write in the first person, explore her family history through a genogram and reflect on how her own identity and experiences might influence her work with clients.

“At the beginning, I found it very uncomfortable,” she says.

“I had completed previous training, but I struggled with the detail of self that you have to put in the training, in your assignments, talking about your experiences and looking at how you might be contributing to the dynamic in the therapy room,” says Eunice.

As she progressed through the training, however, Eunice came to see self-reflexivity and vulnerability as essential parts of therapeutic practice.

“The first two years prepared me for the level of self-disclosure, but when I reached M6, it went even deeper,” she says.

“I realised that the only way to get the best out of the training was to continue to reflect and be vulnerable rather than hide. If I’m not able to go that step deeper, how can I expect my clients to do the same?”

The course also challenged Eunice to consider how she showed up in conversations involving race, culture, identity and intersectionality.

She described reflecting on whether she was bringing her whole self into the room, particularly when discussions became uncomfortable or when her views differed from those of others.

“We’re not always going to get things right,” she says. “But the only way we can improve or create change is by recognising that we are also part of what is going on and being honest with ourselves.”

At the end of the course, feedback from Eunice’s peers and lecturers highlighted her willingness to bring her whole self to the training and to speak openly, even when her perspective was not shared by everyone.

Self-publishing and hopes for the future

Eunice described this experience as “liberating”, particularly given the culture she had grown up with around privacy and not discussing difficult family experiences outside the home.

“As a Black British woman of African descent, part of how I grew up was that you don’t air your dirty linen in public,” says Eunice. “There can be a lot of secrecy and shame when things happen within families.”

“Having to write about my experiences and compare them with those of clients sometimes felt very exposing. But the training helped me recognise how important it is to reflect on those experiences rather than pretend they have no influence.”

Alongside her professional training, Eunice has self-published two books exploring mental health, negative patterns, guilt and shame.

The books were conceived independently of the course, with the first written before she began her systemic training. However, Eunice said the emphasis on reflexivity throughout the programme strengthened the way she has encouraged readers to examine their own experiences and beliefs.

Each chapter contains reflective questions intended to help readers consider the patterns, relationships and wider experiences that may be affecting their emotional wellbeing.

“The course helped me think about how I could encourage that reflexivity,” she says. “It made me consider how someone reading could recognise that there might be something they need to explore within themselves, including what they may be doing consciously or unconsciously.”

Outside her therapeutic work, Eunice is also a singer and has served as a music director at her local church for five years, having been part of its music team for around 15 years. She was also involved in the choir and team that helped produce and perform a song for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

Although her interests span therapy, writing and music, Eunice sees a common purpose running through them: challenging restrictive beliefs and helping people recognise that they do not have to remain confined by the expectations placed upon them.

Looking ahead, she hopes to continue working with individuals and families while encouraging people to examine the systems, experiences and inherited patterns that shape their lives.

“Sometimes we wait for permission from family, society or somebody else to make a change, but that permission might never come,” says Eunice.

“My hope is to continue helping people break unhelpful thought patterns to realise that, while we cannot always control what has happened to us, we can become more aware of how it has shaped us and decide how we want to move forward.”