Your Questions Answered
- Abuse including sexual & physical
- Anger management
- Anxiety
- Living as an autistic person
- Caring for a loved one
- Improving emotional wellbeing
- Coping with grief and loss
- Palliative care and dying
- Aiding decision making
- Depression or low mood
- Domestic abuse
- Grief and loss
- Guilt / shame
- Identity
- Supporting LGBTQIA+ experience
- Life-limiting conditions
- Loss & bereavement
- Low self-esteem/confidence/worth
- Meaning making
- Mid-life crisis or life purpose
- Professional challenges
- Enhancing interpersonal relationships
- Self-Harm
- Sexuality
- Stress
- Feeling stuck
- Supporting student life and issues
- Understanding childhood and family experiences
- Work related issues
- Trauma, including Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Your sessions are confidential, but with limitations.
I work within the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) Ethical Framework for good practice and seek to offer the highest level of confidentiality consistent with the Law and BACP codes.
An important part of the code of ethics is that counsellors have a supervisor with whom they discuss their work. The focus of supervision is to help a counsellor look after the best interests of their clients. I may use examples of my casework in which the identity of the client will be anonymised. The therapist – supervisor relationship is confidential.
Exceptionally, I will involve outside agencies when harm to a client, or others, is considered a serious risk. In these circumstances, if possible, I will first discuss the situation with you and then agree a course of action.
There are circumstances, however, where the law requires me to break confidentiality without informing you, or gaining your consent. These relate to the Terrorism Act (2000), the Children Act (1989/2004), the Drug Trafficking Offences Act (1986- amended by Criminal Justice Act 1993), and court orders.
If you have any concerns, or queries, about these limitations to confidentiality you can discuss them with me at any time.
You are welcome to call me for a free brief telephone conversation to ask questions and to get a sense of me as a person. Some clients prefer to do this by email exchange.
Your first paid session will be an assessment session (see the contact form which you are welcome to complete in advance of the session) to help us work out if we can work together. Sometimes it can take a few sessions to discover this given your reasons for seeking therapy.
In advance of your first session, I will email you a welcome pack. This includes a working agreement, contact form, and sources of help outside your counselling sessions. This provides you with an opportunity to prepare for your first session and to be informed in advance of our first meeting together.
At your first session I will go through the working agreement to clarify you understand and agree to the terms, and the contact form which assists our work together. I will invite you to discuss with me what has brought you to therapy. Towards the end of the session, you will be invited to name what you want to get from your sessions. However, this may not be clear to you for several sessions.
Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays – mornings, afternoons, evenings
Individual adults aged 18 years of age and above; and Couples – Relationship counselling.
From my own experience I recognise the importance, and the challenge, of finding a therapist. Most therapists understand this and will offer a free initial phone call. It may become clear in the first session, or it may take a few sessions, to discover if a therapist is a fit for you. Give yourself permission to find someone you can work with – you will know when you’ve found that therapist.
No. It is helpful to understand that therapy is not advice giving. The therapist may be likened to a mirror who reflects back to the client themselves in their life. Through this the client gains new awareness and is equipped with a range of perspectives and choices in their life. A therapist can make ‘invitations’ to a client who is free to ignore them, or act on them.
It describes the boundaries and scope of our work together. It can be useful to have it to hand during the course of therapy to remind yourself how we have agreed to collaborate.
I practice as a ‘relational integrative’ therapist. ‘Relational’ means that I recognise the power in therapy resides in the relationship co-created between the client and therapist. ‘Integrative’ means that I work with several theoretical approaches (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – CBT, Psychodynamic and Humanistic) so between us we can find a way of working together which meets your needs and aims.
No. At the beginning of therapy it can be beneficial to build the therapeutic relationship with momentum, by meeting weekly. However, we can discuss your needs and circumstances to determine the frequency of sessions which will support our work together.
If you cancel a session with more than 48 hours’ notice, it can be rescheduled without incurring any cost to you. However, if you cancel, or miss, a session with less than 48 hours’ notice, whatever the reason, you will be charged the full fee for the session.
At the outset trust what seems most comfortable to you. Also, give yourself permission to explore different ways of doing therapy. Discuss this with your therapist what you want to get out of therapy and where you are in the process.
Only if you want to. Preparation will look different for different clients depending on where you are in the therapeutic process. Sometimes getting yourself to a session will be all that you need to do, or can do.
That will depend on what is helpful to you. This can be discussed with your therapist.
This can depend on a number of factors. Firstly, it can depend on you and how you work. Also, on the nature of the issue you are working on and what work you put in between sessions. We will review your progress regularly so that you can get a sense of how things are going and how much more needs to be done. Immediate issues can often be dealt with in a defined period. More chronic issues are often more open-ended and take longer. This would all be discussed with your therapist in your first session, and then regularly reviewed.
Due to the nature of therapy, it is important that we have no other relationship during the period we are working together. Communication between us will be limited to the arrangement of sessions, we can agree your preferred mode of communication for this – phone call, text, or email.
If we happen to meet between sessions, I will follow your lead in acknowledging each other or not, as I understand that you may not wish to explain to the people you are with how we know each other.
A working agreement does not provide you (the client) with a ‘crisis service’. If you urgently need help, or support, outside your arranged session times please contact your GP, emergency services, or crisis service providers.
If you are receiving any other form of therapy, please let me know. It is unadvisable to be receiving more than one type of counselling, or psychotherapy, at the same time.
Let me know if you have previously had any therapy and what was helpful, and unhelpful, to you. This can assist in developing the therapeutic relationship between us.
Counsellors and therapists are used to working with people who are taking specific mental health medication and it is important for us to know what you are taking so that we can work with you and support you. There will be an opportunity on the contact form to note this.
Brief factual notes are made regarding each session. The notes are always securely kept and are destroyed 6 years after the last session. It is the client’s right to ask to see their notes.
I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a data controller and operate within the General Data Protection Regulation. My registration number is: ZB338288. You have rights under data protection law. For further information about your rights please contact www.ico.org.uk See my privacy notice.
See my privacy notice.
£60 per 50-60 minute session: face to face, online, phone, walk & talk, home visit (not including travel expenses).
You can pay online, or via bank transfer. Payment is made no less than 48 hours in advance of your session. Your booked session will not take place unless payment has been received 48 hours in advance of the start time of the session.
It is preferable to discuss endings with your therapist, as it is an important part of the therapeutic process. The working agreement between us is voluntary so either of us can end it at any time.
You may still be unsure about certain aspects of the process and have further questions before making a decision about therapy. You can either ask the question via email, or phone me on 07534 599 233.