Paul McManus

Psychotherapist

I left school at the age of eighteen with no qualifications. I was a photocopy boy in an estate agents and taught English as a foreign language on Oxford Street. When I was twenty I spent eight months sleeping on a folding bed in the kitchen of an Italian hotel where I made the breakfasts before going to work in a street market. I worked as a croupier in three London casinos; spent over a year in prison in France; built a chain of launderettes in Amsterdam; tried my hand at copywriting and became Creative Director of one of the world’s leading ad agencies. I was a Samaritan volunteer and one of the founding members of what is now one of the biggest suicide prevention charities in the UK.
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At the age of fifty-five I was diagnosed with ADHD and, for the first time in my life, was able to consider the possibility that maybe it wasn’t the fact that I was thick or lazy or weak-willed that made it difficult for me to knuckle down. Maybe it was just that my brain worked in a different way. And knowing that, maybe I could study after all. It took another five years for me to discover I was autistic.
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I now hold a PgDip in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapeutic Counselling and a PgCert in Autism. I am a member of the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA), the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), and the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP).

Website: www.difrnt.co.uk