About Counselling and Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy / counselling is a confidential relationship between you the client and myself, the therapist, which helps you to explore any issue that you may be experiencing in your life. Counselling is not 'tea and sympathy' but can be a gentle yet challenging way of looking at why certain patterns or relationships in your life may be repetitive.
I provide a comfortable, safe, secure and confidential environment for you to explore aspects of your life that you may be struggling with. I will not discuss what happens between us with a third party except in very specific circumstances which I will discuss with you at our first meeting.
There may be an area in your life which you find dissatisfying or maybe you simply want to examine more about where you are at this point in your life or, are looking for a greater sense of who you are. Often it’s not enough to talk to friends and family about problems and that’s where psychotherapy or counselling may be beneficial.
If you and your partner are looking for relationship counselling it may be for one of the following reasons:
- You keep repeating a pattern of destructive behaviour.
- You are in a new relationship and have not yet worked out how to be around each other.
- You are considering having children and are unsure about whether this is the right decision for you.
- You have had children and are struggling with this huge life changing event.
- Your children have left home and you have lost sight of each other.
- You cannot have children and do not know how to deal with this loss.
- One or both of you have sought a relationship outside of the one you are in.
At our first meeting we will explore what you would like from counselling. This is so that we can both get an idea of what is important to you and the general focus of therapy, this will be reviewed periodically and will evolve as you change.
You may find the terms counselling and psychotherapy confusing, what do they both mean?
The simplest way I can think of to describe the difference between counselling and psychotherapy is the depth at which we work. If, for example you want to work with me on a relationship issue you have, then the work we would do could be classed as counselling. If however, you have a pattern of relationships that seem to be unsatisfactory, then the work may be longer term and classed as psychotherapy. Like many things there are overlaps between the two.
Some people find the thought of discussing their most intimate selves with a stranger impossible and cannot see any benefit from doing that,if that applies to you then perhaps, counselling may not be what you are looking for at this point in your life.
You however may be receptive to working with someone who is both experienced and trained to help you when life gets difficult or maybe you have decided to give counselling a try because talking things over with those close to you has not given you what you need.
Counselling can be of help under many circumstances, some of these include;
There are no guarantees with counselling, I have however successfully worked with people wanting to deal with those issues above. There are good reason's why 'talking therapies' are on the increase and why more and more people are turning to counsellors and therapists.
