Who We Are
EMDR Focus is sister training company to Braynework Ltd, previously working closely with Dr Laurel Parnell, author of several books and highly respected trainer in what she describes as Attachment-Focused EMDR.
We’ve also worked in the past to support UK trainings with Dr Jim Knipe of EMDR Toolbox fame, and Dr Jamie Marich, author of EMDR Made Simple, is a close associate.
EMDR Focus is operated in tandem (excuse the literal pun…) by Mark and Jutta Brayne, from their home on the Norfolk Norfolk coast in the UK (though the photograph is of them cycling the Danube in 2018.)
Please browse on for our team’s personal biographies and backgrounds.
Mark Brayne
EMDR-Europe Accredited Consultant, Co-Director of Braynework
With a background in journalism (30 years with Reuters and the BBC, and Cold War postings in Moscow, Berlin, Vienna and Beijing) and in all-too-often bad news, I’m co-Director with my partner Jutta Brayne of both EMDR Focus (as our EMDR training arm), and of our sister company Braynework through which we offer psychotherapy.
Katie Smith
Organisational and Technical Support
I am a UKCP registered integrative psychotherapist and EMDR therapist in private practice, and also co-founder with my brother George of Bilateral Base, EMDR’s increasingly go-to web app for delivering this amazing therapy online.
I met Mark Brayne in 2019 when I interviewed him for my doctoral research into ‘How EMDR can be integrated into a relational therapeutic approach when working with clients presenting with complex trauma’.
Annabel McGoldrick
EMDR-Europe Accredited Consultant, EMDR Training Facilitator
Annabel McGoldrick is Training Facilitator with EMDR Focus, specialising in Attachment-Focused EMDR, and runs a thriving full time EMDR psychotherapy practice in Central Oxford whilst teaching part-time at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Jutta Brayne
EMDR Europe Accredited Consultant
As an EMDR Consultant and UKCP registered psychotherapist my work reflects EMDR Focus’ integrative, client-centred and attachment-informed approach to psychotherapy. My thorough and comprehensive training in several mainstream therapy modalities, including trauma therapy, allows me to offer psychotherapy closely tailored to your needs and wishes as client.
James Thomas
EMDR UK Accredited Practitioner
James Thomas has been a Registered Mental Health Nurse for the past 25 years, and in 2014 was one of the first EMDR enthusiasts in the UK to train in depth (attending together with Mark Brayne a small group training event in York) with Dr Laurel Parnell.
Sarah Robinson
EMDR-Europe Accredited Consultant, CBT Therapist
My route into psychological therapies started in 2005 when, after qualifying as a nurse in the late 1990s, I first trained as a CBT therapist. After becoming familiar with this approach within a busy Crisis/Home Intensive treatment team, I was fortunate to secure a post as High Intensity Therapist with a local pilot IAPT service, going on to complete my EMDR training in 2009.
Shawn Katz
EMDR-Europe Accredited Consultant, HCPC Registered Counselling Psychologist
I am a HCPC registered Counselling Psychologist and UKCP-registered psychotherapist, having my Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology from Sofia University (formerly Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) in California, USA in 1999.
Maxine Sherrell
EMDR Europe Accredited Consultant.
As a Training Facilitator with EMDR Focus I have a particular interest in Attachment-Informed EMDR and trained originally with Laurel Parnell when she first came to the UK under an EMDR Focus umbrella in 2015.
I currently work in private practice in Devon, seeing clients and supervisees online and in person and I also lecture on a degree in Psychotherapy and Counselling.
Kristina Sandstrom
EMDR-Europe Accredited Consultant, Chartered Counselling Psychologist
Kristina is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist with 13 years of experience within three nationally recognised services, including a tertiary specialist trauma service and a residential trauma clinic where she worked as a supervisor and trauma clinician.
Claire van den Bosch
EMDR Focus Workshop Facilitator
Claire van den Bosch trained as a psychotherapist at the same college in London (CCPE) as Mark, Jutta and Annabel, and in the world of Attachment-Informed EMDR specialises in particular in is addiction and addictive processes
She runs a thriving full-time EMDR psychotherapy practice online, in person in Central London and from her home in Surrey, as well as working one day a week in the outpatient clinic of a private treatment centre.