Summary
Tom Murfitt founded Oxford CBT in 2012 with a clear aim: to provide high-quality, evidence-based mental health support that is accessible, compassionate, and genuinely tailored to the realities of people’s lives.
His route into mental health was not a conventional one. Early in his career, Tom worked in the advertising industry, achieving professional success but increasingly feeling disconnected from work that felt meaningful and aligned with his values. Personal experiences that challenged his understanding of wellbeing, resilience, and recovery ultimately led him towards healthcare and mental health services.
An early childhood injury sparked an interest in rehabilitation and recovery, initially drawing him towards physiotherapy. However, through supporting people living with physical illness, disability, neurological conditions, and life-changing health events, Tom became increasingly interested in the psychological impact of adversity and the role of meaning, identity, and connection in recovery.
This led him into mental health services, where he worked within inpatient and community teams supporting people experiencing severe and enduring mental health difficulties, including psychosis. He later completed a Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy, drawn to its holistic philosophy that people are inherently driven by purpose, connection, and participation in meaningful activities. He subsequently specialised in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, completing a Postgraduate Diploma in CBT alongside further training in mindfulness-based and schema-informed approaches.
Today, Tom has over 20 years of experience working across health and mental health services. Alongside his role as Clinical Director, he remains actively involved in clinical work and is known for his warm, thoughtful, and holistic approach. While grounded in evidence-based psychological therapies, he recognises that emotional wellbeing is influenced by far more than thoughts alone, and works with clients to understand the interaction between psychological health, physical health, sleep, lifestyle, relationships, values, and sense of purpose.
Tom has a particular interest in supporting people who outwardly appear successful and capable yet privately experience anxiety, burnout, emotional exhaustion, or a persistent sense that something is missing. In his experience, lasting wellbeing comes not only from reducing symptoms, but from helping people reconnect with what gives their lives meaning, fulfilment, and genuine connection.
Under his leadership, Oxford CBT has grown from an independent therapy practice into a multidisciplinary mental health service supporting children, young people, adults, families, and organisations across Oxford, Birmingham, and online through psychological therapy, neurodevelopmental assessments, workplace wellbeing programmes, and Mental Health First Aid training.
Experience
Tom has over 20 years of experience working across health and mental health services, delivering therapy within both NHS and private settings and supporting adults and young people experiencing a wide range of emotional and psychological difficulties. His work includes helping people with anxiety, depression, OCD, trauma, burnout, low self-esteem, emotional dysregulation, relationship difficulties, and complex presentations involving neurodevelopmental conditions and co-occurring mental health challenges.
His professional background spans both physical and mental healthcare, providing him with a unique perspective on the relationship between mind and body across the lifespan. This includes supporting individuals navigating significant life transitions, health conditions, disability, loss, and psychological distress, as well as those struggling with less visible challenges such as chronic stress, perfectionism, overwhelm, and a sense of disconnection from themselves or the lives they are living.
Occupational Therapy remains central to how Tom understands mental health. Rather than focusing solely on symptoms or diagnoses, he is interested in how difficulties affect a person’s ability to engage in meaningful activities, maintain relationships, fulfil important roles, and live a life aligned with their values. He believes that wellbeing is influenced by the interaction between psychological, physical, social, and environmental factors, and that sustainable change often requires attention to lifestyle, sleep, health habits, relationships, and purpose alongside emotional wellbeing.
This person-centred and functional perspective is combined with evidence-based CBT, mindfulness-informed practice, schema-informed approaches, and broader psychological formulation. Tom believes lasting change comes not simply from reducing symptoms, but from helping people build lives that feel sustainable, meaningful, and authentically their own.
He has a particular interest in working with people who have spent years appearing capable and successful on the outside while privately experiencing anxiety, burnout, emotional exhaustion, self-criticism, or a growing sense that something important is missing from their lives. Many of the professionals, business leaders, healthcare workers, academics, and high achievers he works with have reached significant milestones yet find themselves questioning their direction, purpose, or sense of fulfilment.
Alongside his clinical work, Tom oversees the quality, governance, and strategic development of Oxford CBT’s wider services, including its multidisciplinary ADHD and autism assessment pathways and organisational wellbeing programmes. This includes Mental Health First Aid training delivered to businesses, schools, and educational institutions, helping organisations create more psychologically informed and supportive cultures.
Approach
Tom’s approach is warm, collaborative, and grounded in genuine curiosity about the person behind the symptoms.
While evidence-based practice sits at the heart of his work, he believes people cannot be fully understood through diagnoses, symptom checklists, or therapeutic models alone. Instead, he seeks to understand the wider context of a person’s life — their experiences, relationships, values, coping strategies, strengths, challenges, and the meaning they make of their experiences.
Drawing from CBT, mindfulness-based approaches, occupational therapy principles, schema-informed practice, and broader psychological formulation, Tom tailors support to the individual rather than applying a rigid therapeutic framework. Clients often describe his style as conversational, thoughtful, calming, and easy to engage with, while still offering clear clinical insight and practical direction.
His work is informed by the belief that throughout life people are continually navigating questions of identity, purpose, belonging, and connection — to themselves, to other people, and to the wider world. Whether someone is struggling with anxiety, depression, neurodivergence, life transitions, burnout, trauma, relationship difficulties, or a sense of feeling stuck despite external success, Tom sees therapy as an opportunity not only to alleviate distress but also to better understand oneself and move towards a more meaningful and fulfilling way of living.
He is particularly interested in helping people understand the interplay between mind and body, recognising the important role that sleep, physical health, movement, relationships, environment, and daily habits play in psychological wellbeing. This reflects his broader belief that mental health is not simply the absence of symptoms, but the presence of meaning, connection, vitality, and engagement in life.
Whether working therapeutically, organisationally, or within assessment pathways, Tom believes good mental health support should leave people feeling more understood, more empowered, and clearer about what they need moving forward. Ultimately, his aim is not simply to help people manage symptoms, but to support them in creating lives that feel connected, purposeful, and worth living.
Interesting Facts
Outside of his clinical work, Tom maintains his own wellbeing through yoga, meditation, and five rhythms dance — finding in movement what he encourages in others: a way to process, reset, and stay present. He loves time in nature, particularly near the ocean, and finds deep value in human connection and seeing the world through other people’s perspectives.
Tom is a strong believer in giving people a second chance after life-challenging situations that may have led to a loss of direction. This is reflected in his work supporting young men to reconnect with their own inner wisdom and voice, helping them build healthier, more meaningful lives in an ever-changing complicated world.
Treatments
- Excessive Worry/ GAD – Teens and Adults
- Social Anxiety – Teens and Adults
- Panic Attacks/Disorders – Teens and Adults
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – Teens and Adults
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – Teens and Adults
- Specific Phobias / Driving Phobias / Agoraphobia -,Teens and Adults
- Low Self-Esteems -Teens and Adults
- Stress Management – Teens and Adults
- Unhelpful habits (eg. self-criticism, perfectionism, procrastination) – Teens and Adults
- Body Image Difficulties – Teens and Adults
- Depression/SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) – Teens and Adults
- Sleep Difficulties/Insomnia – Teens and Adults
- Borderline Personality Disorder – Teens and Adults
- Addictions – Teens and Adults
- Bereavement – Teens and Adults
- Physical Health Conditions (e.g. Chronic Pain) – Teens and Adults
Assessments
- Autism – Adults, Teens, Children
- ADHD – Adults, Teens, Children
What clients say
“It has been hard work but so beneficial. The schema therapy knowledge Tom used gave me a much deeper insight into how my past had shaped me as an adult — and the freedom to move on from it. His unfailing encouragement and empathy kept me going through the most difficult parts of the journey. I would recommend him to anyone.”
— Therapy client, Oxford CBT
