Counselling & Psychotherapy
What is the Difference?
Counselling tends to be shorter term work for people who need to strengthen their resources for a new or temporary situation. It can give you the tools to cope better with your situation.
Psychotherapy tends to be longer term work that goes deeper to the root causes of issues that perhaps are repeating in your life. By finding and working through the root causes, it can help you in many areas and not just with the symptoms presenting at this time.
You do not need to pre decide which one you think you need, sometimes it is a mixture, sometimes your needs emerge in the process.
How Do I Know if Counselling & Psychotherapy is For Me?
Maybe you have tried it before or maybe you are new to talking therapies. Either way, an informal chat is usually the best way to determine if you would like to try it out. Any questions that emerge can be answered within this conversation, or afterwards, as sometimes we find we have more questions afterwards and that it OK! We can work together face-to-face or online. Usually sessions are weekly and are 50 minutes in duration.
My Modality
I work relationally, this means that the therapeutic relationship is important to the outcome. I am interested in the person, not the symptom or label. Research has shown that the quality of the therapeutic relationship affects outcomes more so than modality. My modality of psychotherapy is Transactional Analysis and where appropriate I may share some theory with you. Transactional Analysis offers a great wealth of tools to draw upon and is like having coat hangers to hang your 'stuff' on to help it make sense to you.
A strong vein of equality between therapist and client lies at the heart of Transactional Analysis and it is offers an observable modality of psychotherapy.
How Do Talking Therapies Work?
Talking therapies are used to help make sense of difficulties with the aim of overcoming them.
We are all looking at life with our own very unique lens which is why what can be easy for one person to deal with, can be profoundly difficult for another.
Counselling can help to normalize how you are feeling and reduce self-judgement to create a breathing space towards finding a way through together. It can help you to stand back and observe what is going on. What beliefs are unconsciously affecting your thoughts, feelings and behaviours? What unmet needs are playing out again and again?
Counselling is like being an architect. You and I will be unearthing various matter together. Some nuggets we find are clear parts of the puzzle and we will know where to put them. Others we will hold to one side for now until their place becomes more clear further down the line.
What Can Cause Reoccurring Issues?
As children we must adapt to our care givers in order to survive. It is here we make beliefs about ourselves and others in the world. We extrapolate these beliefs out into the world. Some may be helpful, others may be damaging. Some we may be aware of, some may be unconscious. We adapt to our caregivers as children so that we can survive. We need them for our survival. The strategies we needed back then may still be running our decisions now and may be outdated. They may be limiting or damaging. Healing from these can resolve issues at the core of the symptoms or patterns you may be facing today.
As human beings, we tend to want to avoid negative feelings or feelings that seem too big for us to cope with. It is in this avoidance that we can create a whole world of suffering for ourselves. This can look like substance abuse and addiction, to feeling alone and desperate to connect with another but believing this cannot happen for you. Yet, we also need to be strong enough to cope with painful feelings in order to feel safe enough to feel them. Counselling can help with this process and lead to resolving unprocessed emotions that are stuck within you.
Learning to turn towards painful or negative emotions can help you to find healthier ways to cope, to start to process them, and ultimately not allow them to limit or dictate your decisions.
QUALIFICATIONS
Diploma in Counselling Level 6 Transactional Analysis dip.couns.mncs(accred) (3 years)
Mindfulness Practitioner Advanced Teacher Training (2 years)
Training in bereavement counselling with St Catherine's Hospice
I have 5 years of training in counselling and mindfulness and continue to keep my training up to date with CPD courses.
I have over two years of experience working with clients with a range of issues including anxiety, grief, stress, burn out, and couples therapy.
Governing body - NCPS (National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society)
Training establishments The Link Centre and Connexus Institute
