About Mindfulness-Based Counselling & Psychotherapy

The terms ‘psychotherapy’ and ‘counselling’ are often used interchangeably, but I tend to think of counselling as a short-term form of therapy in which a client wishes to focus on a particular issue for a briefer period of time, perhaps 4 to 12 sessions. For some, this is all they require at that stage, but people sometimes find that initial counselling opens up other areas that they wish to explore in a deeper and open-ended way. It’s totally fine and normal not to know at the outset how many sessions you would like to have, and my intention is very much to support your choices about what is right for you at this time in your life. We’ll review our work together regularly during the process, not least to ensure that we’re continually aligning with what you most want for yourself from our meetings.

Therapy offers a chance to explore, reflect and be heard in a safe, confidential and non-judgemental space. It’s a chance to reflect on and connect more deeply with what’s actually going on for you, and the processes of mind and body that are part of this. It thus supports clearer seeing and deeper understanding in ways that can empower choice and a renewed sense of possibility and motivation in life. My role as therapist is to listen deeply, reflect back, accompany and facilitate rather than to judge, diagnose or direct. As we explore together, we can make use of the dynamics between us to explore how you experience yourself in relationship, and may be experienced by others. This is one of the great gifts of this kind of relational and collaborative work. My wish is to support you in connecting with and living into what you most deeply want for yourself and for your life at this time.

The therapy that I offer is mindfulness-based. This means that it’s oriented to present-moment experience, and has an ethos of friendliness, curiosity, honesty and compassion. It’s only in this kind of climate that our bodies, hearts and minds tend to be willing gradually to ease, open, and move towards a more healthy sense of balance and well-being. Mindfulness enables us to see the ways in which old patterns and strategies, learnt in reaction to past events and experiences, may be showing up in the present and obstructing our capacity for greater ease, enjoyment, depth and healthy connection with ourselves and with others. Seeing these patterns more clearly in the present, and understanding experientially how they arose as strategies for coping with earlier events and experiences, can open up a new sense of freedom to choose other pathways, and to connect more fully with the innate sense of aliveness, depth, capacity and potential that is our core.