My role is to help you gain more clarity, perspective and self awareness. Your counselling sessions will provide you with a time and space where you can explore the problems that trouble you; where you can be accepted, heard and guided to find your own effective solutions. It is a place where you can hopefully feel comfortable to be fully yourself, to breathe easily and to just simply be. Coming to counselling may be a very difficult decision and naturally, you may feel anxious and nervous about it at first, but it is indeed a very courageous decision and one that may benefit you in the long term. 

Essentially, the first session is used to explore the possibility of our working together,  to draw up a therapeutic plan and to go over practicalities such as fees, timing and frequency of sessions. We can discuss your expectations of counselling and you may ask me any questions about how I work and what counselling entails.  

After the first session, or indeed at any point, there is of course no obligation to continue if you do not wish to do so. However, if you do wish to continue, we will review our work together every 6 weeks.

During the sessions that follow we will focus on what is important to you. We might also reflect on predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating factors to your problems and explore how to develop more useful cycles and approaches to life. This process may in turn, allow you to make changes or gain new insights or perspectives.

I will always take my lead from you and avoid giving advice as this is not helpful in counselling and psychotherapy (unless your safety is compromised or I feel you need medical assistance, in which case I will give clear guidance). Sometimes I may provide psycho-education around topics that may benefit you, ask questions or make suggestions to help you make sense of an issue or how you are feeling. If appropriate, we may also collaboratively decide on some exercises to work on at home.

Once you have contacted me via my Contact Form, I will encourage a free brief consultation with me first via phone/email/video and ask you to complete an electronic confidential Personal Details Form. You may encrypt this initial document before emailing this back to me if you wish (to ensure data safety in transit). Once it hits my email account however, it will automatically be encrypted. Alternatively, your Personal Details Form can be completed over the telephone (07902 032 413). This is so that I may gather initial information and demographics and save valuable time during your first session. 

It is up to you how many phone/email/video counselling sessions you book and how long you continue sessions for. According to therapeutic guidelines and good practice, counselling is most beneficial with a minimum of 6-15 sessions. However, some people may require mid-term support which lasts for 4 months – 1 year or long term psychotherapeutic support for up to 2 years.