About Colette Hart

I’m Colette the founder of Heart 2 Hart Solutions. Personal and professional experience of medical trauma has instilled a passion and dedication in me to help those who have been similarly affected. Originally owning three successful wellbeing and cosmetic clinics together with a private school in South Wales, I chose to train to become a Psychotherapist after health problems caused me to have to close my business, leaving me not only with what I considered to be little in the way of hope for the future, but with a distinct lack of emotional support when I needed it the most. Further health challenges over subsequent years have met with the same emotional barriers, which has resulted in this dedicated, private trauma service for health and wellbeing. As an integrative therapist I favour a combination of the models of compassion focused, somatic and mindful cognitive behavioural therapy, meaning I offer a comprehensive, holistic and compassionate way of working with medical trauma. I am the only certified Medical Trauma Psychotherapist in the UK having completed my training at The University of Ohio in the US where the first medical trauma certification was introduced in 2022. I also favour Babette Rothschild’s somatic approach, having completed a year’s post graduate training with the US trauma specialist in London, and I have also assisted on Babette Rothschild’s training programme.

I have vast experience of working with all types of trauma and PTSD; however in recent years it has become very obvious how different and unacknowledged medical trauma is, which is why I’ve chosen to specialise in this field. I have worked within the Cardiff & Vale NHS health board addressing issues of single and complex trauma and PTSD, I was the therapist for the ‘Living with Secondary Breast Cancer’ group for the South Wales division of ‘Breast Cancer Now’ and have provided a number of workshops on communication and relationships after a diagnosis, as well as coping with anxiety for those living with primary and secondary breast cancer. I then created ‘In this 2gether’, educational therapy groups across Wales for those with a secondary breast cancer diagnosis in association with Macmillan, where Iwas the Lead Group Therapist until 2024. I am currently the Psychotherapy Consultant and mentor for this service.

Previously I developed a pilot scheme known as ‘Cake & Counsel’; educational group therapy for those living with a chronic medical condition. This took place over a 10 month period and progress results were measured, collated and presented to a group of Health Care Professionals. Those attending noticed a considerable improvement in their mental health and medical anxiety symptoms and I am currently working towards offering similar schemes for other medical trauma related conditions. Whilst keen to expand my one-to-one and group practice I am currently establishing a ‘partnership’ of like minded professionals from the UK, Europe and the US to pool resources and skills in order to generate greater awareness of medical trauma/anxiety, through educational seminars and interactive group work. This will be accessible for patients, clients, clinicians and Counsellors.

Much as I love my work I also need to take my own advice, ignore my inner critic and take time out for me! That might look like dog walking somewhere remote, baking and eating cake, mantrailing and scentwork training with my dogs, eating more cake, indulging in my reignited passion of reading about/visiting historical places, and reading or watching tacky fiction whilst eating chocolate - sometimes with a glass of wine!