Amy Prior

I was born in Wales and have lived in the Brecon Beacons all my life, I am the third of four children. We were brought up on a small holding with cattle, sheep and goats and often sold goats milk to the local community. I went to school in the local primary and secondary Schools. At 18 I moved to Bangor to study Criminology and loved my time in North wales.

Once I graduated I moved back to Brecon and started work in a probation project for 3 years, which housed and supported people age 16-70 who were in the justice system. I then moved into the youth justice system and started to provide one to one sessions to help young people prevent re-offending. During this period in my life I had two beautiful children. We love dining out, adventures and holidays together, they have taught me so much in life.

My journey then continued as I went to University of South Wales and studied Social Work. I knew I had a passion for therapeutic work and my placement in CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) helped me decide that mental health was there area in which I wanted to develop my career.

Once I graduated I was offered a position in NHS CAMHS and commenced my therapy journey.  I have been in CAMHS for 10 years. I trained in both EMDR Therapy and DBT Therapy and really enjoyed providing therapy to children and young people with trauma and mental health problems. 

I was then promoted in another CAMHS Service in Wales and was asked to provide EMDR Therapy to children and young people. I really enjoyed this and wanted to expand my academic knowledge. Therefore, I applied to study a Master’s in EMDR Therapy at Worcester University. I commenced the course in 2017 and graduated in November 2019. I love academic study and I really enjoyed the EMDR Master’s as it expanded my knowledge on EMDR Theory, Research and practice. My Research study was related to extended stabilisation with children and young people. Although it was a lot of work it made me even more passionate about EMDR. 

I then became a Consultant Child and Adolescent EMDR Therapist in March 2020 and started providing supervision to therapist across the world. I feel very privileged to hear all the amazing work being done by other EMDR Therapists. 

As part of EMDRGATEWAY team, I have really enjoyed doing the filming to create videos for therapists and my children have also helped us create films over the years. We look forward to providing more videos for you all I the near future.