What is counselling

Counselling is a talking therapy, which allows you to openly express yourself, and share your innermost thoughts and feelings, in a safe, yet supportive space. It is an opportunity to be listened to in a confidential setting, which allows you to start to unpack and understand what is troubling you in a constructive manner.

Very often internalising your issues, leads to irrational thoughts and unhelpful patterns of behaviour, however by airing the issues, the client starts to make sense of their world.

Counselling differs from confiding in a friend, as a counsellor will not give advice nor place judgements on your life. What a counsellor will do effectively is be empathic of your issues, whilst allowing for a different perspective to be shown, enabling you to have more clarity of your situation. Inevitably, this is created by challenging you, and probing into your core beliefs, allowing the counsellor to help you form coping strategies going forward.

It is therefore of utmost importance for the client to be committed to the therapy sessions, as consistency is the key to continued progress.

What is discussed during the sessions remains confidential. The confidentiality is only broken for the following reasons: if the client is deemed a danger to themselves or others, where possible this will be discussed with the client in the first instance. Each counsellor, under the guidelines of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy, will discuss their cases with a Supervisor, on a monthly basis – however the client will not be identified by name, only by their issues, to protect their anonymity.This however will all be explained to the client at the initial session, and will form part of the contract for therapy too, so will be agreed by both parties.

Counselling is offered on both a short and long-term basis, all depending on your issues, it will be reviewed every 6 weeks, to allow both counsellor and client to feedback on the progress thus far. Some issues require only short-term solution- focused counselling, whereas other deep-rooted, long-term issues, will require a much more substantial time in counselling. It is worth noting, that very often clients discuss issues about their lives that are both painful and upsetting to air. Please be reassured that the counsellor will be empathic to each issue raised, and allow the client to deal with their own process at a pace that is dictated by the client.