Mindfulness for health and wellbeing

Counselling

Modern day life can put pressure and strain on anyone and we can struggle to have clarity of thought when things become overbearing. Working with a counsellor is a helpful experience when you are facing difficulties that may be impacting on your life, relationships or wellbeing. I can offer you support to work through those difficulties. I am a Relate trained Couple Therapist, experienced in working therapeutically with couples, individuals and children. I am able to offer flexible appointment times.

My approach combines psychodynamic, systemic, mentalization, mindfulness and play therapy for children, this means that I can draw from a range of different types of therapies to best support you the client(s) to understand your current situation and how this may be impacting on you. Together, we can explore how you can learn to accept things or make adjustments to better cope.

I offer a trusting, warm and open environment to work therapeutically with you and share a space which provides you with an opportunity to talk in confidence and without judgement. Together we can explore what is happening for you at the moment, and in a supportive manner find a way to move forward that is best for your situation.

I see individuals and couples for many different reasons, my approach is to draw on the modality which suits your needs best, in a confidential, calm, empathetic, sensitive and respectful way.

The support I can offer, provides a route towards processing loss, building coping strategies, working through difficulty with trust, self-esteem, connection, dysfunction, hurt and anger.

When we want something to change, it can help to safely turn towards the feelings, to process and unpack them, work towards alternative coping mechanisms.

Our sessions can be somewhere to do this. Using your own inner resources and the frame of our work together, building a route through relationship and emotional distress. Counselling can provide us with an external resource too, to aid us in tapping into our inner strengths and resources. Sessions offer a chance to reflect, to consider alternative perspectives and to try out alternative coping strategies.

As our relationships mean so much to us, it is often a place to start. When something goes wrong, it can leave us depleted and it can fee hard to know how to put things right.

What To Expect

After assessment and contracting*, in our sessions together, we will start with a chance to talk through how you're feeling, what's been difficult and how you'd like things to be. This helps to focus our work and make good use of the time that we have**.

You may want to look at what has come before or keep the focus on how things will change in the future.

We can look at a range of approaches for working with individual issues and relationship distress. This might include explorations of communication patterns, working through the complexities of family relationships and history or unpacking thoughts around self-belief and esteem.

Our lives centre around the quality of our relationships and it's here that we, together, could make a difference.

[*Assessment is about being sure what you are looking for matches the competencies I can offer. Contracting outlines what you expect from me and what I expect as a counsellor in return].

[**Following assessment, it may be in the interest of clients to make an onward referral, for the best possible care and support]

If you think I may be the right counsellor for you or have any questions please call for a chat or email any questions to me. If I am not the right counsellor for you I wish you well in finding support to move forward from the place you are at this moment and would encourage you to speak to somebody you can trust to help understand your difficulties.

Counselling Fees

Face to face or Webcam / Telephone

Individual Counselling - £50 for the Initial Consultation and for subsequent sessions, please find further information on individual counselling here.

Couples Counselling - £50 for the Initial Consultation and for subsequent sessions, further information on couples counselling here.

The duration of each session is 50 minutes. I ask that you pay for each session 24 hours in advance by bank transfer or by cash at the start of each session, cancellations are required 24 hours in advance. You can learn more about what to expect from starting counselling here.

Training, Qualifications and Professional bodies

Qualifications

Diploma in Relationship Counselling (Relate)

IAPT Couple Therapy for Depression (Tavistock relations)

Mentalization-based Therapy for Parenting under Pressure (Tavistock Relations)

Diploma Counselling Children and Young People

Mindfulness Practitioner Teacher Training course (Professional listing on UK Network of Mindfulness Teachers)

BA Hons Degree

Award in Mental Health Awareness

Helping Skills (Counselling Skills)

Training

Mental Health First Aid (Mind)

Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) (Mind)

Mindfulness Practitioner Training programme

Child Protection & Safeguarding

Domestic Violence and Abuse

Mental Health Awareness

Suicidal Risk and Support

GDPR and personal data handling

Foundation of Infant Loss Counsellor Training

Solution Focussed counselling

Working Therapeutically Online (Webcam, telephone, email counselling)

Emotionally Focussed Theraoy

Understanding Sex and Porn Addiction

Health Advocate training

Professional Bodies

I hold current memberships with several professional bodies, including: Member of British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP); Member of Institute of Family Therapy (IAFT); Listed on UK Network of approved Mindfulness Teachers; Chartered Member of the institute of Personnel and Development (MCIPD)

Registered Member of British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP)

Along with my private practice, I have experience of working within primary care settings as a Psychological Therapist working with individuals who are experiencing difficulties which impact on their wellbeing.

I work within the charity sector as a Relationship Therapist, working with couples experiencing difficulties in their relationship. I also offer specialist work with couples where one or both partners are experiencing depression and with couples where there is high conflict and they share concern about the impact of this on their children. More recently I have begun working voluntarily for Place2Be in primary school, counselling children on a long term basis.

All of my work is supervised and I work within Relate, Place2Be and the BACP ethical guidelines, and within the ethical standards of UK network for Mindfulness Teachers.

As a counsellor I am open, warm and develop a trust and space which can be used to share concerns or fears, I am committed to self-development and self-reflexivity.