How I understand change

When early care (childhood) is good enough, we grow up believing that closeness, feelings and other people are mostly safe. When that care isn’t good enough, we adapt our behaviour, trying to avoid pain and get our needs met as best we can. These adaptations might involve ignoring a part of ourselves or turning against ourselves. This way of behaving can become fixed, and get in the way rather than helping.

People usually come to counselling when they notice, perhaps painfully, that their old way of doing things is no longer working.

The Therapeutic Relationship

When a therapeutic relationship offers what was missing — steadiness, honesty, warmth, interest — we can drop those adaptations and explore what it is like to feel, share and trust. Frozen parts within us can thaw, and a fuller sense of who we really are becomes possible.

It sounds grand. In practice it looks like turning up weekly, being met as you are, and slowly trusting the process.

The strongest predictor of a good outcome in counselling is the quality of the relationship between client and therapist. So that relationship is my starting point, and everything else is arranged around it.

Really being heard

I aim to see the world as you see it, to be honest and transparent with you, and to accept you as you are — without judgement and without needing you to be further along than you are. Those three qualities sit underneath everything else I do.

Confidentiality and your information

What you bring to counselling stays between us. There are a few exceptions, and I’d rather you knew them before we start than discovered them later:

Supervision. Like all ethical practitioners, I discuss my work with a supervisor. This protects you as much as me — it keeps my practice honest and catches my blind spots. I share only what’s needed to think about the work well, and I don’t use identifying details unnecessarily.

Serious risk. If I believed you or someone else was at risk of serious harm, I would have to act to keep people safe. Wherever possible I’d talk with you first and involve you in what happens next.

The law. Occasionally the law requires disclosure — for example a court order to share information about you, or safeguarding duties protecting children and vulnerable adults. I am also legally bound to report any terrorist or money-laundering activities.

Record keeping. Any records I keep are stored securely and retained only as long as the law and my professional body require.

Clear agreements about confidentiality, contact between sessions and physical contact are set out before we begin, so nothing is left to guesswork.