Personal Approach to Counselling and Psychotherapy

While there are overlaps between counselling and psychotherapy, I tend to see counselling as being for short term, more goal-oriented support, while psychotherapy is for longer term in-depth exploration of your issues, working with your symptoms and the causes underlying them, as well as looking at options for living more fruitfully. Counselling can be for six sessions, and longer term work for nine to 18 months, or longer, depending on how much work you wish to do on yourself.

I work with you where you are, in an empathic and non-judgemental way, and while I can offer other perspectives, it's not my job to give advice. I fully believe in the power of therapy to help us turn our lives around, and therapy does require a commitment from both of us to work together to help you find better ways of dealing with what life has sent your way and find a greater understanding of your true self.

This is confidential (except in exceptional circumstances in which anyone is at serious risk of harm) and I adhere to the codes of ethics of practice of the BACP and UKCP.

I work holistically, integrating transpersonal/spiritual, humanistic, psychodynamic, cognitive and mindfulness approaches. Besides the classic talking therapy, I work with dreams and creative techniques, such as sandplay, drawing, visualisations and writing (no expertise needed for any of these).

Endings can be difficult, and it’s so much easier to just walk away, but in therapy we can talk it through. Likewise, any problems you have with the therapy, or with me, please do come and discuss them – therapy is a unique opportunity for practising ways of doing things differently. This often happens at a crucial stage, when you may have shared a lot of personal stuff and it may feel that things are getting worse before they get better. They will get better but, in therapy as in any relationship, it takes two to make it work.

I have been a practising psychotherapist/counsellor for the past 15 years and I am experienced in helping individual adult clients with many issues, including:

Relationship difficulties and breakdown

Anxiety (including panic attacks, social anxiety)

Stress

Unresolved childhood trauma, abuse and neglect

Loss and grief

Low self-esteem

Loss of meaning and purpose

Obsessive thinking - de-cluttering of minds (and homes)

Depression

I also offer Supervision to other counsellors/psychotherapists; I run one-day workshops on creative writing therapy entitled Inner World Writing; and I offer students of counselling/psychotherapy help with essay writing, from getting started to editing and proof-reading.