Counselling in GL7 on the Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire borders.
Close to Cirencester, Stroud, Swindon and Witney.
The world can be a very challenging place and it's easy to feel anxious, defeated, confused and alone. Counselling offers a helpful way forward. As a counsellor, my aim is to listen to and really hear you, accompany you and provide a safe, secure space to explore difficult emotions and conditions that may be troubling and bewildering. Gently, at your own pace, we can go wherever you might need to go and I will work with you to achieve a better understanding of what's going on for you and what it might mean.
Some feelings and situations that we might work with include:
- Anxiety
- Anger
- Relationship Issues
- Loss
- Stress
- Grief
- Depression
- Futility
- Abuse
- Addiction, or living with addiction
- Bereavement
- Shame
- Self-worth
- Or simply feeling "out of step" with what's happening around us.
Counselling can provide the container and process to:
- hold these feelings,
- help them to be unpicked, with a better understanding and acceptance of them and their underlying issues,
- potentially alleviating them, changing them from burdens into resources.
About Me & How I Work
I work in an integrative way - at the heart is a Person Centred approach where you as the client know better than anyone what your feelings and experiences are. I will try to understand them as we explore, appreciating and truly being present with your internal journey as you share it with me. I will reflect back to you what I might hear and understand as we progressively make sense of what could initially feel very chaotic and bewildering.
Infusing this is a Psychodynamic approach- a belief that our present experience is coloured by our past emotional life. Exploring the patterns in which we can find ourselves locked in the here and now, and teasing out their origins in our past can be enlightening and freeing, furnishing us with choices that we might not have otherwise seen.
A third approach that informs my practice is Gestalt, where by paying attention to how we are physically feeling and where in our bodies those sensations are placed, we can often unlock emotional responses that have long been blocked and shut down. I use Transactional Analysis, and Systemic principles as well.
Working relationally is the most important aspect of what I do, because life is about relationships and problems felt within us can translate to them. Exploring their difficulties in the therapeutic relationship can be of great value, facilitating longed for change.
I am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP) and hold a BA (Eng.Lit) and DPS (Couns) level 6. I am a qualified and experienced Cruse Bereavement Care Practitioner, however due to current commitments I am not presently in practice with them.
Working Together
Therapy can be shorter term, responding to an immediate need for support around a specific issue. It can also be medium, long term, or open ended, more profoundly exploring what could be deeply distressing patterns of behaviour or feelings. Sessions can, when appropriate, take place on a fortnightly basis. Your needs are uniquely yours and can be looked at when we first meet.
Fees: £50 per 60 minute session, with missed sessions charged for unless arranged otherwise by prior discussion. I am deeply committed to the belief that counselling should be available to everyone, so discounts are available by negotiation. I offer an initial assessment session free of charge so that we can exlore working together. I also offer some weekend and evening sessions. I work via WhatsApp and FaceTime too- please do get in touch to discuss logsitics and fees if this is of interest.
Supervision
I also offer integrative, relational supervision for counsellors. As with my counselling practice, my theoretical orientation is based on a combination of Person-centred, Psychodynamic, Systemic and Gestalt thinking (additionally drawing upon the TA model), and the core and foundation of the therapeutic and supervision work I do is relational.
At its heart, and at its best, supervision is relational, offering a co-created way to think more deeply about therapeutic process with client welfare paramount. We will work collaboratively to understand client and therapist process by focussing on the relationships between you and your clients. How do you experience them and yourself in the room, and how do you perceive their experience of you? We’ll look at how these relational dynamics might have developed, illuminated by differing theoretical foundations, and what messages they might have for us about the clients’ internal landscapes.
We will create a space in which we can consider together: “What are we making together? How are we making it? Who are we becoming as we make this?” (W. Barnett Pearce, Making Social Worlds: A Communication Perspective, 2007). All underpinning the greater understanding of what is going on for your clients, and you, in the facilitation of therapeutic process.
I work face to face and by video link via Facetime and WhatsApp.
Supervision fees are £60 per session, with contact between sessions negotiable, and I offer an initial assessment session free of charge.
If you would like to know more or have any questions, please do get in touch.
Published articles
How to find us
Location: My practice is located in Quenington, near Cirencester, on the Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire/Wiltshire borders. It is private, and there is ample free off-road parking. My ground floor consulting room offers easy access.
Click on the address below for directions.
