Tag: HRS Counselling

Posted on

Counselling Supervision

I am counsellor with over 11 years of experience offering supervision to new supervisees. I am Person-Centred trained and work with adults, children and young people. I have developed a more integrative approach to working over time, however the relationship remains at the core of my work.

I have experience both personally and professionally with neuro-divergence, an interest in working creatively and love to think in images and metaphors. Building a strong relationship with new supervisees is essential to my work- it is important you feel safe to be yourself and imperfect in supervision, not expecting judgment but support and encouragement to be more confidently you in the therapy room. 

I’ve been trained in the 7 Eyed Model which means we take a flexible approach to our work together- exploring the client, your relationship and the work, as well as you and your personal needs to stay well in what can be a challenging field.  

Sessions are online, mid-week and during the day and I can be flexible about how often we meet a month. I offer a discount to counselling trainees.

It is important that a supervisor feels the right fit for you so I offer a free 15 minute video call to get to know each other and see if working together feels comfortable to you before arranging a first session if you’d like to.

I look forward to hearing from you and working together!

Posted on

Relationships- a messy tangled process

Relationships are hard. Even the smoothest relationships take a lot of work. The reason? To relate effectively with those around us we have to be fully aware of our patterns of relating (good and bad).

Clients often come to me because they are finding relationships hard, whether with their partner, family members, work colleagues, kids, or maybe it has all gone wrong and they need support through the process of a relationship ending. It can be really helpful at this time to sit down and really face, however painful, what’s been going on. In my opinion it is impossible to understand ourselves and how we relate now without looking at what shaped who we are and how we act in relationship with others.

This can be a process we’d rather not do, but returning to and understanding our early childhood relationships with our key care givers can give us valuable insight. It can often be a joke people make about therapy- how long did it take for your therapist to ask you about your childhood? And while I’m all for not getting stuck in the past, it is incredibly important to recognise that those early formative experiences told our developing brain (now we know forming up until our mid 20s) everything we had to know about people, the safety (or lack of it) they represent, what those people tell us (or make us feel) about ourselves and how to behave (or talk) when things go well and when they don’t go well.

Once we fully consider and use this insight we can then make more informed choices in the present. We can either take responsibility for and challenge ourselves to do better in our relating, or we can realise relationships are not helpful to us and we can stop engaging in unhealthy patterns. This is a messy, tangled process, full of complexities that can often be hard to unravel on our own. That is where I come in, we will sit together, teasing apart those knots; the good, the bad and the, at times, very ugly and help you make sense of what you need to feel happier in relation to those around you.

Posted on

Self esteem- finding a you to feel proud of

Many of my clients come to me with a feeling that deep down they just aren’t good enough. This can of course feel different for everybody, however it can leave life feeling difficult to cope with. It can effect confidence, relationships, professional lives and hopes for the future. If you find yourself beating yourself up or feeling that others feel better than you, or feel you have to put on a front or feel defensive around other people, these feelings may make sense to you. If they do, I understand how hard this can feel and how difficult it can feel to overcome. I want to reassure you that what you are feeling is not unusual and that in exploring and understanding where these feelings come from and how they have developed over time, you can start to change how you feel about yourself and in turn how you respond to life around you. Time after time I am struck by how powerful it can feel to clients to have the time to explore and challenge how they have thought about themselves and, over time, find a version of themselves that they feel proud of. If this is something you feel you would like to discuss further I would be happy to hear from you.

Posted on

Depression- there IS hope.

I have worked with a large number of clients and have often been struck by how the experience of depression can differ so much between individuals.

Some describe it as feeling they are constantly carrying around a heavy weight, a dark cloud in their head, a deep it or shadow that they struggle to get away from. Some describe it in terms of a general feeling of hopelessness, unhappiness, worthlessness or feeling stuck in the past. Others describe noticing sleeplessness, achiness, their head feeling fuzzy or a change in appetite and enjoyment of things that used to bring them joy.

It can be so easy when these feelings feel overwhelming to feel alone, to avoid others and to beat yourself up for ‘not coping’. There can also feel a real need to understand why you feel like this.

It’s at this time you need to hear that you’re not alone, that even if it feels difficult to understand or hard to pin down a specific cause, what you are experiencing is your body’s natural response to life’s challenges. I want you to know that what you are feeling isn’t a sign of weakness or another comment on your flaws.

I am here to stand with you and help you believe, however desperate things feel, it is possible for things to change.

I have found that counselling can be really powerful as it gives the chance for you to feel safe to experience the feelings and thoughts that often feel ‘too much’ to think about or that we may not even be fully aware are causing us so much trouble. We have the chance to see and understand ourselves fully, to accept and learn to be kind to ourselves and to recognise our potential, our extraordinary ability and most importantly that there IS hope.

I know reaching out when you are feeling how you are may feel really hard. I have seen that you will feel better for doing it and it is one, hugely important, step towards finding yourself again.

Posted on

New Year, New You?

Happy New Year?

For lots of people this can feel a hard time of year.

Whether Christmas was a time of joy, surrounded by those you love, or a challenge where you recognised who was missing or what is difficult for you and in your relationships, January and February can be tough- and the grey days and dark nights don’t help!

Surrounded by the chants of ‘New Year, New You’ it can often feel like it’s hard to know where to start to feel happier being you…

In this blog I will discuss some of the issues my clients come and see me with; from depression, bereavement and relationship problems to low self-esteem, anxiety and health issues, amongst others.

I hope it may help to hear and understand more about some of the challenges I frequently work with, however I want you to know that whether you can identify with these examples or not, you are not alone.

With every client I work with, we aim to work together get to the bottom of how you are feeling, to understand more about your struggles and how you can best move forwards towards lasting, meaningful change.

However dark things feel there is always hope and I am here to help. This can be the year of a happier you.