FAQS
What do Counsellors and Psychotherapists do?
These are the professionals who provide psychological help via counselling/therapy. Counsellors and psychotherapists help you better understand yourself, your behaviours and relationships with others. They do not diagnose, prescribe medication or give advice.
Counselling work can be short or long term and deals with everyday life issues that we all come across such as bereavement, marriage issues, parenting challenges, work related concerns, conflict in families, anxiety about something specific or in general, depression and sometimes big questions pertaining to the meaning of life.
Psychotherapy tends to be long term work which looks to the difficult events of a person’s past to make sense of difficulties in their present life. This can be disruption in developmental stages caused by traumatic incidents and feelings or simply that the useful nurturing that should have been provided for us as we matured and developed just simply didn’t happen.
What is an integrative counsellor?
My integrative Masters level training was in a humanistic, particularly person-centred, modality with developmental-psychodynamic and CBT components. As such, my model of working takes skills and knowledge from these different modalities and incorporates aspects of both counselling and psychotherapy. Overall, it is a relational approach, which simply means that I believe that therapy is best done with the relationship between you and myself at the centre with a sustained effort at attuning myself to your experience of the world and of others. This allows for healing through emerging self-awareness and trying new ways of how to be in relationship with others and, most importantly, yourself.
How to choose a Counsellor?
The most important factor for a good outcome in therapy is the relationship between you and your counsellor. This makes it very important to choose someone you can work with. I would also recommend choosing a counsellor who is a member of a professional body such as the BACP or UKCP, this means that they are highly trained and work ethically as well as accountably. I am a member of the BACP and I offer a free 30-minute phone call so you can be sure that you are happy to work with me before you pay anything.
Where can I get more information about counselling?
For more details about the BACP, counselling and choosing a counsellor, visit these links: