About therapy
What counselling can help with, how a session runs, and the honest difference between sitting in the room and meeting over Zoom.
Life's challenges can be overwhelming, and asking for help is a real step towards managing them.
This is a safe, confidential space to explore what you're thinking and feeling, build strategies that hold up, and work towards a steadier life. Seeking help is not a sign of weakness, but a courageous act of self-care.
What I work with
Some pressure sharpens us. But when it doesn't let up — when sleep goes, the body starts complaining and everything feels like one more thing — it stops being useful and starts doing damage.
Often the pressure isn't only coming from outside; a good deal of it is in how we've learned to read the situation. That part can change.
Fear has something in front of it. Anxiety often doesn't — it's the dread of what might happen, and it can settle in without ever naming itself.
It shows up as pacing, as tight breathing, as a knot under the ribs, as thoughts that circle the same ground at two in the morning. You don't have to be able to explain it before you talk about it.
Depression flattens things. What used to give pleasure gives less, or nothing, and the energy required for ordinary tasks becomes disproportionate to the tasks themselves.
It is not a matter of effort or character, and it is one of the most treatable things people bring to this room.
Anger is usually the surface of a deeper issue, and it can play havoc with a life before anyone looks underneath it. Sessions offer the room to find the conflict that's driving it, and somewhere to put it down.
Sometimes people come to therapy because they need a friendly, non-judgmental ear — somewhere they can say what they think without it being managed, corrected, or turned back on them.
In ordinary life it's surprisingly hard to find someone who listens all the way to the end. Being properly heard tends to produce insight on its own.
Also worked with
None of these need to be neatly defined before you make contact.
A death can lead to complicated grief. So can a loss of any other kind — moving abroad, the end of something, an injury that leaves a mark. It's normal to experience a major loss as traumatic, and sometimes the feelings become overwhelming: insomnia, despair, anger, low mood.
Most of us don't like change. Retirement, redundancy, a new job description, a new baby, a move from school to college — even changes we chose and wanted can open a period of real uncertainty.
All relationships are complicated — at home, at work, in bed. Most of the time we sort them out ourselves. Sometimes it just doesn't work, and a different perspective helps.
Gender and sexuality sit at the meeting point of how you understand yourself, your body, and the world you move through. Questions there deserve to be talked through somewhere confidential and without judgement.
Abuse and bullying take physical, emotional and sexual forms, and happen in every age group and setting. They are extremely hard to confront, precisely because of the fear and the damage to self-esteem they cause.
Self-harm tends to arrive in times of great stress, as a response to inner turmoil. It is serious and it should not be ignored — and it can be talked about here.
Addictions take many forms: alcohol, drugs whether prescribed or not, gambling, sex, even exercise taken to an extreme. Admitting to yourself — and then to someone else — that a behaviour is no longer under your control is genuinely difficult. Most people conceal it first, feel shame about it, and believe change isn't possible.
In the room, or online
Both work. They're not identical, and it's worth knowing the difference before you choose.
In-person work carries more information: body language, expression, the small things that don't make it into words. That tends to build trust faster, and it makes a stronger working relationship — which is one of the best predictors of therapy actually helping. It also draws a clean line between the session and the rest of your day, and gives you a dedicated place to think.
Online removes a lot of barriers: distance, travel time and cost, physical access, a schedule that won't bend. For anyone who finds leaving the house hard, or who worries about being seen going to a therapist locally, it can be the difference between starting and not starting.
The honest trade-off: because it's easy, it's also easier to cancel. For some people the journey to and from the room is part of the work — the first time they've left the house, and time afterwards to think. And technology fails, which eats into a session. Neither is a reason to avoid online work; both are worth knowing in advance.
The first session
We talk. I'll ask what brings you here, and explain how confidentiality works — including where its limits are.
There's nothing you have to prepare and nothing you have to be ready to say. At the end you decide whether to come back. Many people agree to about six sessions and then review it together.
Common questions
You can talk about any issue that matters to you. That often includes negative feelings and self-beliefs, difficulties in friendships, relationships and family, work-related difficulties, dealing with things from your past, bereavement, and sexual issues — to name only a few.
Generally weekly. Regular, consistent sessions let the working relationship develop, and that usually means a faster and deeper understanding of what's going on. In some cases we agree to meet fortnightly instead.
There's no single answer — it depends on what you're dealing with. We can discuss it in the first session, and you can either leave it open-ended or fix a number.
It's often agreed to work together for about six sessions and then review whether to continue. A session lasts about 50 minutes.
No. I work only with adults over the age of 18. Children and teenagers need different skills and resources to be helped effectively, and they're better served by someone trained for it.
You don't need to know what you want from therapy before you make contact.
Arrange a first sessionTherapy works at the pace of an appointment. If you are in crisis or at immediate risk, please don’t wait for one.
