In July 1992 I was heading home after spending two incredible post-university years living in Asia, travelling and teaching English in Japan. On the way back to the UK I was due to spend a month in Thailand and, in those pre-mobile phone days, called home from an international payphone in Bangkok’s central post office. I called my dad first but the phone just rang and rang, which was unusual because he usually picked up. I then spoke to my mum and she burst into tears before telling me my father had died of a heart attack the day before. He was just 62.

I vividly remember standing there in shock, tears streaming down my face in the middle of that busy post office. In a daze I hailed a tuk-tuk, and it weaved through the stifling heat and traffic chaos of Bangkok back to my hostel. I packed my bags and arrived back in chilly England, numb with grief and culture-shocked, in my tie-dye T-shirt and sandals. I was only 24 and, over the coming months, had no tools to cope with the hard ball of anger and pain that was lodged in my chest.

I eventually saw a wise, kind counsellor who helped me express all that sadness and hurt as the grief flowed through me. The only silver lining of losing my dad was that this transformative experience of counselling led me to train as a counsellor myself.

In the three-and-a-half decades following the loss of my beloved dad I experienced many kinds of therapy – transpersonal, humanistic, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, CBT and EMDR – but the therapy that had the most profound impact on me was internal family systems (IFS). IFS now forms a central part of my integrative approach to trauma healing along with schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, Janina Fisher’s trauma-informed stabilisation treatment, mindful self-compassion and Buddhist psychology.

IFS was such a warm, compassionate, non-pathologising approach to healing the hurt young parts of me. At the heart of my inner system is Little Dan, the sweet young boy who lives in my heart and mind. And he is deeply hurt not only by my father’s death but by a fractious divorce between my parents, which reverberated throughout my childhood. I grew up in a Jewish family shaped by generational trauma, which profoundly affected me – as did a savage year of bullying in primary school, which eroded my sense of self.

I also had to navigate various family members struggling with alcoholism and mental health problems including schizophrenia. I remember being summoned back to London to meet one of them at the psychiatric unit where they’d been forcibly sectioned, and to try to manage this highly distressed person until my dad returned from a work trip.

I was lucky enough to have found a therapist who embodied the qualities of ‘Self-energy’ (the warm, compassionate inner resource we all possess) that lie at the heart of this approach – kindness, compassion, tenderness and a skilful holding of every part of my inner system, especially the traumatised young ones. We have worked steadily through the many traumatic events of my childhood, adolescence and adulthood together.

I recovered from losing my dad and the buried childhood trauma this event triggered, which led to many years of crippling depression. It inspired me to specialise in helping people heal from the trauma that blighted my childhood. I hope my painful experiences give me a deep emotional empathy with my clients – ‘I have been there and felt that too,’ I often tell them.

Of course, I wish I had not lost my dad. He was a complicated, difficult man but also warm, funny and loving. I miss him every day. And I wish my childhood had been easier, but if I hadn’t struggled through all those complex family dynamics I don’t think I would be a therapist today. My heart and mind were shaped by trauma so they could understand and help people like me. And that is a wonderful gift.