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Counselling Services

Counselling and Psychotherapy are talking 'treatments' used to treat mental, emotional and some psychiatric disorders. They help the person to understand and accept their strengths and weaknesses as well as what makes them feel positive or anxious. Identifying feelings and ways of thinking helps the person to cope with situations they find difficult and new ways of approaching them. This requires a trusting relationship between the person and the therapist and can last for weeks, months or sometimes years.

Psychotherapy or Counselling can be carried out on an individual basis, as part of a group or with your spouse or partner. During your sessions, you are encouraged to talk about yourself, your feelings and your situation/problem and the therapist helps you to find ways to tackle them. It can take place over a short period of time, between 6 to 12 sessions or over longer indefinite periods where problems can be addressed at a deeper level.

Different people have different needs in therapy and my approach is to use appropriate techniques according to your specific problems. I use an integrative approach that includes Cognitive Behavioural, Psychodynamic and Transpersonal Therapies.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy aims to help people change patterns of thinking or behaviour that are causing problems in their day to day lives. This is a structured approach with goals agreed at the outset and planned exercises carried out between sessions.

Psychodynamic Therapy involves a therapist listening to your experiences, exploring connections between current feelings/actions and past events. It can be especially useful in helping people with long term or recurring problems get to the root of their difficulties.

Transpersonal Therapy includes, and goes beyond the realm of psychology and emotions and explores deeper meaning and purpose to crisis and the problems we experience. It is based on the belief that through crisis we have the opportunity to grow and develop our full potential as human and spiritual beings.

Couple Counselling provides an opportunity for a couple to explore their problems in a supportive and safe atmosphere that facilitates mutual understanding and the development of their relationship. Imago Relationship Therapy, developed by Harville Hendrix, offers powerful and effective methods with which couples can quickly and effectively access the core reasons for the problems they experience and provides the 'tools'to enable the couple to work towards healing and reconciliation.






Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) was originally developed by Francine Shapiro in 1987. EMDR taps into the natural healing process of the mind that has been found to take place during sleep, particularly during that period of sleep when we experience Rapid Eye Movement (REM). Initially used mainly for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), it has since evolved into a highly effective therapeutic technique for a wide range of problems.




While I have many years experience and training in the field of psychology and human development and have a lot of expertise to bring to my work with you, I believe that you hold within you the power to heal yourself and the answers to the problems you face. Because of this, a large part of our work together will be finding those answers and to do this I will, with your agreement, use various creative methods to help you explore the problems you face. These may include things like visualisation, talking, art, role-play, working with dreams and paper and pencil exercises.

How to begin To find out whether or not Counselling or Psychotherapy is right for you our first contact would be by phone or email. We would briefly discuss confidentiality, why you want to come, how I might be able to help, fees and an appropriate appointment time.

The first session would consist of you telling me more about yourself and the difficulties you are facing, deciding whether or not I am the right therapist for you and give you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have.



Confidentiality

Our sessions are confidential and will not be discussed with anyone without your agreement unless there is a requirement by law to do so or if there is a risk of serious harm to yourself or others. However, in the unlikely event that this might happen I would fully discuss the matter with you first