What is Counselling?

Counselling is a professional service that involves a trained therapist or counsellor providing guidance, support, and assistance to individuals, couples, families, or groups who are facing various challenges or difficulties in their lives. The primary goal of counselling is to help clients explore their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, gain insight into their problems, and develop strategies to cope with or overcome them.

Counselling can address a wide range of issues, including mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression, and trauma, as well as relationship problems, grief and loss, career challenges, and personal growth and development. Counsellors use various therapeutic techniques and approaches tailored to the specific needs and preferences of their clients.

Overall, counselling aims to promote mental and emotional well-being, improve interpersonal relationships, enhance coping skills, and support clients in achieving their goals and leading more fulfilling lives. It provides a safe and confidential space for individuals to express themselves, explore their concerns, and work towards positive change.

Integrative Counselling

There are lots of different types of counselling out there. You may have heard, or seen, other counsellors list the different type of therapy they offer, from CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) to person-centred therapy to psychodynamic therapy or even Gestalt therapy.

I work as an integrative counsellor.

But what does that mean?

Integrative counselling draws upon different types of therapy to tailor an approach specifically for you. This is because as an integrative counsellor, I don't believe that one therapeutic approach can help everyone or any situation. Instead I look at the whole person and will draw upon techniques and tools from different modalities to help you explore and cope with your problems.

Click here to read more about different types of therapy

What to Expect

Initial Call

Making the decision to seek counselling may feel daunting and a little scary. You may also feel confused and overwhelmed trying to decide which counsellor would be right for you. To hopefully make this a little easier I offer a telephone or teams call. This 20-minute initial call is free and gives you an opportunity to see if you feel I am someone you could talk to, for you to ask questions, for me to explain how I work and for both of us to see if what I offer is right for you.

First Session

If you decide I am the right counsellor for you we will book in our first session. The first session will involve contracting. All counsellors will contract with you and what this means is we will spend some time discussing how we will work together, the boundaries of our working relationship, terms and conditions of working together, confidentiality and expectations from both sides. I can send you the contract before our first session so that you can have a read through it first and make some notes of any questions you may have.

Sessions

The different types of sessions I provide and somethings to think about when picking what's right for you:

Face-to-face

Face-to-face counselling takes place within my practice room at my home address. The space is safe, confidential and comfortable.

Things to think about:

The travel time to and from counselling
Whether the available times work for you
Accessibility. Whilst I try to make my room accessible the doorways may not be large enough for certain mobility equipment

Online

Online counselling provides support to any location. The platform I use is Microsoft Teams.

Things to think about:

Internet reliability
Whether you have a safe and confidential space to have our sessions free from interruption
After the sessions: are you looking after children? Going back to work? How will you feel doing this after a possible emotional session?

Telephone

If you’re looking for a confidential and comfortable way to talk about your problems, Telephone Counselling may be for you.

Things to think about:

Your telephone/mobile phone signal
Do you have a safe and confidential space to talk openly about what is going on for you?
What are you doing after the session? If you have children to look after or work to go back how will you feel doing this straight after a session?

Let’s Work Together

Get in touch so we can start working together.