“LET IT FORM AND LET IT TELL YOU WHAT IT IS” – Eugene Gendlin
If you feel a distress, whatever it is, it is real, and it is important. It deserves your attention. Distress is a signpost, a signal from the body. You may have been ignoring this signal for the longest time, looking the other way, distracting yourself, coping….
But what if, this time, you choose to turn towards it, to listen to it? This can be a moment full of an extraordinary potential – a crossroads. If you are here, at this crossroads moment, I am hoping you can act on it, in whatever way feels best for you right now – and allow something new to unfold…
I offer one to one therapeutic counselling and am based in the Stroud area. I aim to provide a warm, friendly welcome for you, in the hope that you too can enjoy becoming accepting and curious about all that emerges as we work together. Counselling, even while we look at the difficulties, should ultimately feel good!
I am also a qualified Focusing Practitioner and am able to offer individual focusing sessions – for beginners who are wanting to learn Focusing, as well as for more experienced Focusers.
I am an Accredited Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, work in compliance with the BACP Ethical Framework, and carry full insurance. I graduated in Psychology and qualified as a counsellor with an FdA in Therapeutic Counselling from the University of Gloucestershire. In the recent past I worked for more than five years with Cruse Bereavement Care, supporting and counselling people dealing with grief and bereavement. I have also worked with the N.H.S. Let’s Talk Service, offering counselling for those with anxiety and depression. Currently I see clients in private practice, support Stroud’s Listening Post as a counsellor there, and offer sessions for patients at a local NHS surgery.
The foundation of the way I work is person-centred. The approach is based on a deep trust in the individual’s ability fo find his or her own way towards growth and health, if given the right conditions. It respects the wisdom of our bodies and of our symptoms, and seeks to enable and support, rather than to suppress or to change what is uniquely there. It puts the client in charge, not the therapist; so I will be guiding and offering possibilities, rather than interpreting or telling you what to do….
I also draw on a focusing-oriented approach where it seems helpful. This is an experiential approach that supports you in going beyond what you already know, your cognitive understanding; and creates a space to attend to feelings you may sense vaguely but canonot yet put into words. I regularly use this focusing type of inner attention in my own life, and have found it always helpful, sometimes transformative and find it consistently helpful in supporting and enabling real and lasting changes for clients, in short spaces of time.
I welcome all enquiries, however casual initially. If you are not yet sure what you need, please phone for a chat or come for a free initial session to discuss things.
Other things: Back in 1995, I qualified as a homeopath from the British School of Homeopathy and worked for many years in private practice, with a special interest in supporting emotional health through homeopathy. Since then, having discovered the wonderfully elegant and powerful process of change called Focusing, I have pursued my own, continuing, focusing practice; I gained the Focusing Skills Certificate a few years ago, and have completed a Focusing Practitioner training. All these three paradigms, person-centred and experiential Counselling, Focusing and Homeopathy, seem to me to provide similarly respectful ways of supporting our health. They trust and support our bodies’ symptoms and distresses as valid and coherent attempts towards growth, rather than simply attempting to manage or palliate them.