Our Counselling Services

Counselling is more than talking. We talk every day to different people: our partner, friends, colleagues. This is not counselling. When a client comes into our room, the focus of the talking in the relationship with the therapist is on the client -this makes it different from any other relationship. As counsellors we have the skills and experience to help our clients to look at their problems and issues and start to deal with them in their lives.

We both appreciate how difficult it is for our clients to come in and open up and trust a stranger with their most intimate thoughts and feelings. We are aware of and respectful of this. We endeavor to provide a space in our counselling room that’s respectful and sensitive to the client.

Carl Rogers, one of the founder theorists of counselling, claimed that if three conditions were present in the client/counsellor relationship then the client would grow and change for the better. The counsellor must have empathy for the client, have non-conditional positive regard for the client and be congruent or genuine in their approach. In our work with our clients we aim to provide that in ourselves. We help clients to become more self-aware and understand themselves and their problems better. We use Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) to help this process.

Whatever reason you come to counselling it’s an opportunity to develop your EQ – “Emotional Intelligence”. You go to school to develop your IQ but with counselling and working through your problems you are developing your EQ. More self-awareness, self-understanding and improved communication skills facilitate this process. You not only learn to address your problems, you also grow and change in all areas of your life as growing in self-esteem is part of the outcome of counselling and developing better EQ.

Sometimes the root of current problems in the client’s life is rooted in the past. We can’t change the past but we can deal with the ties or effects in the present. The amygdala‎, a part of the emotional brain, is formed in pregnancy and stores emotional impact for all our lives. To access this unconscious influence in the emotional brain on our current behaviour we can use other tools besides talking. Some of these that we use here are Sand Therapy and Art Therapy for which we have additional training and qualifications.