Counselling Adults
What is counselling?
Counselling is a talking therapy where a counsellor helps you understand yourself, your life, and your relationships.
There are many types of counselling and talking therapy and my training was mainly person-centred. Person-centred counselling is an approach that places the client at the heart of the counselling process. The counsellor's role is to provide a supportive environment where the client can explore their thoughts and feelings without judgment. This method emphasizes the client's ability to lead the conversation and find their own solutions, rather than relying on the counsellor as an expert.
Over the years I have developed a more pluralistic approach, and I will now draw on theory and methods that seem appropriate to my work with you, including other approaches such as CBT and psycho-dynamic counselling; neuroscience and mindfulness. However, I will always explain why I might want to use a particular approach and will respect your decision to not want to go with that.
How can counselling help?
Counselling can be helpful if you are dealing with difficult decisions, tricky relationships or important decisions or life changes. Often people come to counselling when they have gone through a trauma or significant loss, such as being the victim of crime, death of a loved one, job loss, ill-health or relationship difficulties. Sometimes, nothing is particularly wrong but difficult feelings are still there, such as anxiety, depression or stress. And you don’t have to have anything ‘wrong’, counselling can also be useful to make sense of your life, discover meaning and live a more fulfilling life.
How can I help?
I will offer time and space for you to think and talk about what is going on for you, without judging or rescuing you. I will listen respectfully and with empathy and my aim is to understand what you are going through as deeply as I can. I can then support you in looking at your life in a different way, feeling happier and maybe making some changes.
I will keep the sessions confidential, which means that I will not talk about our sessions with anybody apart from my supervisor, a qualified counsellor who helps me to do my job well. However, there will be times when I have to break confidentiality, I will explain that in more detail in our first session.
What happens in the sessions?
A session is normally 50 minutes long and can take place online or face to face. We will usually start the session with a check-in (how are you today?) and set an ‘agenda’ (what do you want to talk about or do?). I often use mindfulness in the sessions, which can be everything from starting with a ‘mindful pause’ to doing a meditation or explaining a technique. Again, it is up to you whether you want to include this in the sessions. I will keep the time and warn you when our session is nearly over. At the end of the session, we will take some time to ‘wrap things up’ and maybe draw some conclusions.
Ending
Counselling is a time-limited activity, it will come to an end at some point. I offer open-ended counselling; there is no set number of sessions. We will talk about this in the first session, and we can negotiate how many sessions you think we’re going to need. We will review how the counselling is going on a regular basis and will decide together when it is a good time to end the sessions.
What next?
If you decide you are interested in working with me, get in touch by sending me an email or using the contact form. I will offer you a free half hour session on-line where we can get to know each other and decide whether we want to work together. We can then arrange a first session, in which I will ask you some questions about yourself and we discuss the contract. The contract includes dates and times of the sessions, limits of confidentiality, charges for the sessions and how we work.
Counselling is a talking therapy where a counsellor helps you understand yourself, your life, and your relationships.
There are many types of counselling and talking therapy and my training was mainly person-centred. Person-centred counselling is an approach that places the client at the heart of the counselling process. The counsellor's role is to provide a supportive environment where the client can explore their thoughts and feelings without judgment. This method emphasizes the client's ability to lead the conversation and find their own solutions, rather than relying on the counsellor as an expert.
Over the years I have developed a more pluralistic approach, and I will now draw on theory and methods that seem appropriate to my work with you, including other approaches such as CBT and psycho-dynamic counselling; neuroscience and mindfulness. However, I will always explain why I might want to use a particular approach and will respect your decision to not want to go with that.
How can counselling help?
Counselling can be helpful if you are dealing with difficult decisions, tricky relationships or important decisions or life changes. Often people come to counselling when they have gone through a trauma or significant loss, such as being the victim of crime, death of a loved one, job loss, ill-health or relationship difficulties. Sometimes, nothing is particularly wrong but difficult feelings are still there, such as anxiety, depression or stress. And you don’t have to have anything ‘wrong’, counselling can also be useful to make sense of your life, discover meaning and live a more fulfilling life.
How can I help?
I will offer time and space for you to think and talk about what is going on for you, without judging or rescuing you. I will listen respectfully and with empathy and my aim is to understand what you are going through as deeply as I can. I can then support you in looking at your life in a different way, feeling happier and maybe making some changes.
I will keep the sessions confidential, which means that I will not talk about our sessions with anybody apart from my supervisor, a qualified counsellor who helps me to do my job well. However, there will be times when I have to break confidentiality, I will explain that in more detail in our first session.
What happens in the sessions?
A session is normally 50 minutes long and can take place online or face to face. We will usually start the session with a check-in (how are you today?) and set an ‘agenda’ (what do you want to talk about or do?). I often use mindfulness in the sessions, which can be everything from starting with a ‘mindful pause’ to doing a meditation or explaining a technique. Again, it is up to you whether you want to include this in the sessions. I will keep the time and warn you when our session is nearly over. At the end of the session, we will take some time to ‘wrap things up’ and maybe draw some conclusions.
Ending
Counselling is a time-limited activity, it will come to an end at some point. I offer open-ended counselling; there is no set number of sessions. We will talk about this in the first session, and we can negotiate how many sessions you think we’re going to need. We will review how the counselling is going on a regular basis and will decide together when it is a good time to end the sessions.
What next?
If you decide you are interested in working with me, get in touch by sending me an email or using the contact form. I will offer you a free half hour session on-line where we can get to know each other and decide whether we want to work together. We can then arrange a first session, in which I will ask you some questions about yourself and we discuss the contract. The contract includes dates and times of the sessions, limits of confidentiality, charges for the sessions and how we work.