Counselling

Counselling

What is counselling? 

When you share with a spouse, partner, friend, co-worker the things which are on your mind, they can go into a number of modes none of which are particularly helpful as now we have our original problem to deal with AND the overhead of dealing with their reaction to what we just said when we shared our original problem so we end up wishing we'd not said anything in the first place:  

"Fixing" mode where they say things like "what you need to do is" or "you shouldn't put up with that" and we don't need that lecture. Often we know EXACTLY what we need to do to fix "it" whatever "it" is, we are just finding it hard to gear ourselves up to tackle it and could do with some moral support.

"Soothing" mode by saying things "don't worry, it'll be alright" when a) how can they even know that? and b) it is not alright NOW, thinking about it is keeping you up at night and what is needed is emotional support as you rally yourself and not meaningless, ill-informed platitudes.

"Pull yourself together (because I have NO idea what to do with you in this state and you are supposed to be the strong one here") mode" and now we have this thing we're struggling with and the other person freaking out that we are losing it and we have to manage them, calm them down when we have barely enough mental resources to keep our own show on the road.

Counselling is a confidential conversation between counsellor and client offering the opportunity for you to be heard and, in so doing, make sense of your life yourself and gain the clarity either to take action to change the situation or accept the situation and change your attitude to it and in so doing move on with it in your life. 

Who we work with

Initially, most of our counselling clients are sponsored through their employing organisation’s HR or People strategy. They come into counselling because, despite their best efforts, they feel "off", just can't get back to their normal selves and want a confidential, non-judgemental breathing space in which to hit pause on the World and, with no one making demands on them, reflect, pinpoint what’s really troubling them, get to the root cause then choose what, if anything, they want to do about it.

How is counselling structured?

The first session is a 50 minute "Chemistry Test" session so you can tell Claire a bit about you in general, along with an overview of what has you thinking about coming to counselling at this precise moment in your life in particular, so you can see how Claire is with that, if you feel you could trust and work with her. Equally, Claire wants to be sure she is a suitable counsellor for you, that there is nothing in the mix which she is not experienced or trained to work with you upon.

If both of you feel at ease, and nothing prevents Claire from working with you, then counselling sessions are 50 minutes long at Claire's private practice (or online using Zoom or Teams), once a week on the same day and the same time or booked 3 weeks ahead if your working pattern, or other life commitments, do not support "same time, same day". Sessions continue until you feel content that what brought you into counselling has either been resolved or accepted.