Counselling is an opportunity to speak about anything that is troubling you, in a confidential and supportive setting.  My work is trauma-informed, meaning that pacing and safety are important.

People enter counselling for many and varied reasons including:

– Anxiety and depression
– Loss, grief and bereavement
– Struggling to cope, feeling overwhelmed
– Anger
– Developing self-compassion
– Relationship issues
– Early experiences of neglect and abuse
– Life crisis, such as a breakdown or an important life transition
– Self-esteem
– Feeling lonely, lost, or disconnected
– Explore the meaning of/relationship with physical illness and symptoms
– Experiences around neurodiversity and society
– A desire for personal growth and a sense of wholeness
– The search for meaning and purpose in life

I think it’s important to say that I don’t see the person as ‘a problem’ to solve but rather that every person is a unique individual with their own particular story and experiences.

There are reasons for how we are, for how we coped with adversity in the past, and just making sense of such survival strategies can be liberating.  Over time, life continually presents us with new situations and challenges; these can be viewed as opportunities to learn new skills and wisdom.  Here, a counsellor can assist and offer insight in an impartial and non-judgemental manner.

Sometimes we experience crisis. Although painful and frightening, once we have travelled across the abyss, we may find we have developed beautiful and valuable qualities in ourselves.

Counselling isn’t a ‘miracle cure’ for all suffering. In a stressful world, however, it offers something quite rare – the time and space to attend to what hurts and what matters.

Counselling can lead to new ways of being and expressing oneself, relating with others, understanding and navigating life experiences, discerning what we value, developing creativity, releasing grief, trauma and frozen patterns, and finding a way forward towards a more meaningful and authentic life.

My training is integrative, meaning that I draw upon various approaches and adapt these to the needs of the client. These include the humanistic approach (which is optimistic and emphasises human potential), psychodynamic (which seeks to understand and transform unconscious patterns from early life) and transpersonal (which includes a holistic and spiritual perspective on experience).

Where of interest to the client, I can offer additional techniques of exploration such as artwork, visualisation and body-based approaches.