Individual Counselling

You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” – Leymah Gbowee

It is hard to walk a path that is unknown and full of challenges.  As a counsellor, I cannot know exactly what it’s like to walk in your shoes, but I can travel the next miles alongside you.  Building a strong therapeutic relationship is the most important ingredient in achieving a successful outcome in counselling.  Therefore, I believe it is essential to build a good rapport and therapeutic relationship, based on respect, trust, understanding and unconditional acceptance.  Enabling you to feel safe to explore whatever you bring to your sessions openly and confidentially without being judged.

How I Work

I counsel clients using an integrative approach, which means I draw on different schools of thought and ways of working to encourage the most effective therapy for each individual client.  I may also use creativity in our sessions if you are comfortable with this. Our counselling sessions may often involve looking at past history, childhood, family or cultural experiences, as well as what is happening for you right now.  As everyone is unique, an integrative approach honours the individuality of each client in a way that allows for flexibility within the counselling room and avoids a one size fits all approach.

During our sessions, I will encourage you to explore feelings, and understand your thoughts and actions with an emphasis on developing self-awareness. Our counselling relationship is essentially one of mutual trust and respect.   My role is to support and help you explore, making sense of what you are struggling with, not to disagnose, advise or tell you what to do. You are the expert in yourself and therefore we will work together to find out what you wish to change, determine your goals for therapy, and how you can make those changes.

The areas of counselling that I work with, include but are not limited to:

  • Affairs and betrayals  
  • Anxiety
  • Cancer
  • Career counselling
  • Carer support
  • Depression
  • Family issues
  • Feeling sad
  • Generalised anxiety
  • Loneliness and isolation
  • Loss and Bereavements
  • Low self confidence
  • Low self esteem
  • Panic attacks
  • Phobias
  • Postnatal depression
  • Redundancy
  • Relationship problems
  • Separation and divorce  
  • Significant life events
  • Stress  
  • Trauma and Abuse
  • Work related issues
 

This is not a comprehensive list, therefore please do email me sjscounselling@hotmail.com if you would like to discuss another area of support you are seeking help with before deciding to book your first session.