How I work
What might bring you to counselling?
You might be feeling overwhelmed, sad, anxious, afraid, depressed, stuck, or confused. Perhaps managing your emotions has become difficult and has begun to interfere with your every day life, relationships, or employment, or you would like to get help to avoid this happening. You might be puzzled by your feelings or by other people's behaviour, or perhaps you struggle to name, accept, or process your emotions. You might have lost touch with who you are, what you enjoy, and what you want in your future. You might need to offload and decompress to reduce your stress. Counselling can help us to deal with experiences such as difficult family relationships or friendships, menopause, trauma, work issues, bereavement, low self-esteem, and long term illness. It can be used to process emotions such as anxiety, distress, fear, anger or guilt. You might need someone to talk to who will listen with kindness.
What is counselling?
Counselling can help us in ways that affect both our mind and our body. Counselling can allow you to experience the freedom of being your authentic self and saying what you really mean, and it can build your ability to trust your own perception and judgement. You can explain our thoughts to a counsellor and have them carefully reflected back to you, so that you can hear what those thoughts sound like, in order to make more sense of how you are feeling. You can share your worries and know that counselling is confidential. My counselling approach combines working with both the mind and with awareness of the body to change and improve how we experience our emotions, and how we relate to the world and to other people. Counselling improves self-awareness, and this helps us to better understand our thoughts, actions, goals and experiences. From here, we can develop healthier perspectives and coping strategies. Getting help early can prevent issues becoming worse, and if your mental health is already significantly affected, counselling can support your recovery and, in most cases, your journey towards feeling better.
How can counselling help?
Experiencing stress, anxiety or trauma can trigger the nervous system into an over-sensitive or a collapsed state. Talking to a counsellor who is really listening, so that you feel heard, understood, and accepted as yourself can help to calm and regulate the nervous system. Being in conversation with someone who is calm and listening can go a long way towards co-regulating the nervous system into a more comfortable state. A calm nervous system is important for healthy wellbeing, and counselling can help us to learn more about the nervous system and to find the right frame of mind in which to practice mindfulness and grounding. Counselling carefully challenges us, but instead of criticising or pronouncing judgement, a counsellor will gently invite you to think in a different way if their training and experience leads them to think that this might be helpful for you. You are afterwards free to retain your perspective should you so choose, and to have this caringly respected. Being heard, accepted, and valued as an individual can reduce anxiety, improve self-esteem, and build resilience to cope with the inevitable challenges in our lives. Being encouraged to develop self-compassion and treat ourselves with kindness can quieten our inner critic. Creating awareness of how we are in our physical body and using grounding techniques can help us to feel less anxious. I believe that we all have the skills and resources within ourselves to live lives that feel more authentic and fulfilling. If integrative counselling suits you, I can help you with anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, understanding family relationships, depression, abuse, managing long-term health conditions, suicidal thoughts, bereavement, menopause, carers' issues, and experience of dating scams. long-term illness.
What is my counselling style?
I am an integrative counsellor. This is a talking therapy, and I work person centred way and always ask if you would like to try any techniques that I think you might find helpful. A free introductory phone call helps you to find out if you feel comfortable speaking with me and allows us to build trust. After the first session, which includes a short assessment at the beginning, sessions are carried out as a conversation. My work draws on the neuroscience of the nervous system, working with boundaries, and psychodynamic and attachment theories. As an integrative counsellor, I am able to draw on elements from a number of counselling approaches, such as person-centred, relational, solution-focused, and Transactional Analysis. I work with anxiety by identifying helpful ways of thinking and finding ways to help you regulate your nervous system. To improve self-esteem, I aim to help clients to raise self-awareness and learn to like who they are. Relationships are individual so we talk about how you feel about the relationship, discuss the dynamics, and help you to make decisions about the relationship going forward.
Concerns you might have
If you want to talk about specific events but disclosing specific details feels uncomfortable, that's OK, we can work only with your feelings. We can agree to work in this way, and, if it helps, we can add this to our contract that sets out the way we work if this helps you to feel safer. You are free to raise concerns or ask questions at any time.