How counselling helps
Counselling will help you to understand the PAST, experience the PRESENT and to realise the FUTURE
Who will benefit from counselling?
- People from all walks of life find counselling helpful whether this be for:
- Bereavement - death of a loved one, the loss of a pet, or you have experienced some other loss.
- Struggling with an issue from the past
- Experiencing major life changes (children leaving home, new career, divorce or separation
- Employment issues
- Improving your relationship
- Feeling anxious or depressed
People consider seeing a counsellor for many different reasons. Counselling can help you see things more clearly, perhaps from a different perspective. It can enable you to make choices and reduce confusion. It does not involve giving advice or directing you to a particular course of action.
I strongly believe that everyone has their own answers and that given a safe space to explore your issues you will be able to draw upon your own resources to find your solutions. I aim to offer a caring and non-judgemental space where you will be accepted as you are, and allowed to work at your own pace in discovering more about yourself, and your difficulties.
Person-centred counselling
Person-centred counselling is the approach that I work within. The therapeutic relationship that forms the basis of this approach allows you to explore the issues or situations that cause you difficulty. Together we can focus on what prevents you from getting the most out of your life and relationships. This involves looking at all aspects of your experience:
- Your THINKING (or cognition)
- The MEANING and SENSE that you have of your world (which includes your spiritual aspects)
- Your FEELINGS and EMOTIONS
- Your BEHAVIOURS and also your NEEDS
Working in this way helps you to integrate these different aspects of your experience to allow your natural healing tendency to emerge.
What change can you expect from therapy/ counselling?
This is based on Christine Lister-Ford’s (2002) model, which describes the process of therapy and what you might experience as we work together.
The client tells their story, important information is gathered, and the practitioner and client develop their working relationship. The client develops insight and awareness about themselves and the origin of their problems.
Next comes the working through stage. During this stage the client will release “held emotions related to going against their human wants and needs” (1). Sometimes clients need to grieve for the past – opportunities they’ve missed because of their self-imposed limitations. Clients become free to re-evaluate their lives, free from the limitations of the old destructive patters of thinking, feeling and behaving that had been holding them back.
The redecision stage comes next, which is where the clients makes and acts upon decisions they have made for themselves based upon their new freer way of being. Clients will experiment with “being different both inside and outside the counselling session” [1] Succeeding and ending counselling. This is the point at which the client has achieved their goals and are happy to review their work and end the therapy. [1] Lister-Ford, C. (2002) Skills in Transactional Analysis Counselling and Psychotherapy London: Sage, p 12
