Counselling & Psychotherapy

What is Counselling?

Counselling can offer you a safe and confidential way of dealing with or addressing problems, making difficult life changes and find ways to rediscover and reclaim your excitement and passion for life.

Counselling and Psychotherapy can be helpful in supporting individuals in managing…

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Stress
  • Panic Attacks
  • Alcohol and Drug Misuse
  • Phobias
  • Anger Management
  • Relationship Issues
  • Family Problems
  • Sexuality
  • Self Esteem
  • Personal Development

The focus in couples counselling is on the relationship and improving difficulties in communication or resolving differences between people. Couples therapy can be beneficial in managing…

  • Communication.
  • Relationship difficulties.
  • Resolving differences.
  • Managing Crisis.
  • Managing life after infidelity.
  • Helping couples to understand the impact of outdated patterns of behaviour and beliefs, which no longer support the partnership.
  • Helping both parties explore new ways to support each other and move on.
  • Amicable separations.

What is Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is a psychological and relational process. It is a means of exploring interpersonal or emotional difficulties and confusions. It is a process of raising awareness and gaining self knowledge, which can begin open up pathways towards resolution. Many people are drawn to psychotherapy as part of a quest for a different experience of life.

Jeff with tree

Jeff’s Approach

My work with people draws upon a wide range of models of psychotherapy and counselling, some traditional and some more contemporary. An absolute foundation of my work is respect for others and their individual lives and experiences, which may be very different from my own. I aim to be open to peoples needs and endeavour to find individualised responses to those particular needs. In this way I am able to avoid a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

A therapist cannot be defined merely by the school in which s/he received professional training. (Joseph Zinker, Sketches, 2001)

Many peoples first contact with me is motivated from a place of extreme crisis and/or distress. My approach is to provide a welcoming safe haven from which to begin to explore ways to move on. Many clients who have believed that their experiences were too shocking to share have benefited from a warm, accepting and down to earth approach. I believe that freedom of choice and self-esteem depend on knowing ourselves clearly, and attach great value to working through unfinished business from our past.

I am interested in exploring ways that learned survival patterns can limit freedom and choice in everyday life. I am interested in working with men and women who want to know themselves better and understand themselves more deeply. I have a particular interest in working with Adult Children of Alcoholic Parents and anyone whose life has been effected by another’s drinking.
I recognise and appreciate that sometimes humour can be a useful aid to the healing process.
I am interested in my own and others’ creativity and have enjoyed working with a variety of creative artists including painters, musicians, writers, ceramicists, sculptors and actors. My aim is to work collaboratively and in ways that are nurturing, stimulating and facilitative. I enjoy helping people rediscover and reclaim their excitement and passion.

Creativity is about exploration and experiment. It is about knocking over convention and established ways of doing and being. This is not to say that the routines we use to function effectively are not valid, far from it. What it does mean is that we should be able to recognise when some routine or habitual way of doing something is keeping us stuck and won’t let us free to be creative. (Trevor Bentley, Creativity, 2002.)