Counselling is a space designed to help you gain a better understanding of yourself. Through looking at your life experiences and relationships, the way they have shaped you, and how they affect your feelings and behaviours, you can create awareness of your feelings ‘then’ and making connections with the ‘now’. This understanding can be helpful in finding peace and acceptance within yourself and what you've gone through, while the awareness can support you in making changes in the way you see things and in your behaviour.

By understanding why you might react in certain ways or experience certain feelings, you might also find it easier to be more compassionate towards yourself, which in turn can help you feel more positive and motivated to change your view or attitude.

The information you share in counselling is confidential. This means that I will not disclose what we discussed with anyone else. However, in accordance with the BACP Guidelines, I attend clinical supervision. Here, I may discuss some of the details you shared in sessions in an anonymised form. My supervisor is also a BACP member bound to confidentiality. I use supervision to ensure I am working ethically and I am meeting your needs.

In addition, after each session, I make a brief note of what we discuss during sessions, in line with BACP and insurance requirements. My notes are anonymised and no identifiable information is shared on them. They are stored securely and only I have access to them, unless required by court order.

There are some circumstances in which I may need to break confidentiality due to ethical and legal requirements. For example, if I suspect you or someone else is at risk of harm, I will attempt to discuss with you how to best proceed to keep you or others safe. Should I not be able to discuss this with you, I may need to contact a third party (e.g. GP) and disclose my concern. In addition, I am required by law to report any concern of child abuse and any terrorism threat.

This will depend on a range of factors, such as the difficulties you’d like to work on and what you want to achieve through therapy, as well as the speed you’d feel comfortable working at. Most people decide to work in an open-ended manner as this helps them not to feel under pressure to ‘tick things off’. It can put you at ease to know that you can take as long as you wish to to open up, discuss and revisit difficult thoughts and emotions, without the stress of a limited amount of sessions remaining.

Though due to financial and scheduling constraints, open-ended counselling might not be suitable for everyone. If your circumstances only allow for a limited number of sessions, we can still work together - the work might just look slightly different and more focused on your main goals. If this is the case for you, please let me know and we can discuss this together.

To begin with, I would recommend starting with weekly sessions, usually taking place on the same day and time every week. Meeting frequently and regularly would provide you with consistency and allow us to build our rapport more efficiently.

Once the relationship and process have been established, more flexibility around the frequency of therapy is easier to navigate and I would be happy to explore with you what this may look like, whether it’s a reduction in how often we meet or a break from therapy. Please note that I have limited availability for fortnightly sessions, meaning our usual time may not be suitable and we may need to find an alternative time.

During the consultation call, I will talk you through what counselling is, what my approach to therapy looks like and what the next steps are should you wish to get started. You will also have time to ask any questions you may have around these or anything else you would like to know.

If you feel comfortable, you can also share what brings you to counselling and what concerns you would like to address.

Finally, we will look at our availability and agree on a day and time that would work for us both should you wish to book your first session. I will hold the space for you for up to a week, but you are welcome to take longer to make your decision, though I would not be able to guarantee the same slot.

Our first session functions as a trial. It gives you the opportunity to experience what the therapeutic process looks like, without having to commit to working together. Like all sessions, our first will last 50 minutes. During this time, you are free to tell me what's been on your mind and what you would like to take or achieve from therapy. If you’d like to, we can discuss specific goals you have in mind and any preferred way of working together. If you're finding it difficult to know what to say, don't worry - there are exercises we can do together to take the pressure off and to ease you into reflecting on yourself. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable and safe, so if it takes us a while to get there, that's okay too.

Additionally, I may ask you some questions around your childhood and adult life, as well as your relationships, coping strategies and lifestyle. This information helps me understand your needs and gain some context around what it feels like to be you.

Before the end of the session, I will make some time for us to reflect on the session and to discuss my therapeutic contract. This will help us set the expectation and boundaries of the therapeutic relationship and cover some practical aspects, such as the frequency of sessions, confidentiality, cancellations and payment. I will provide you a copy of this (electronically or printed), so you can take your time to look over it.

You will be given the choice to sign up for regular sessions after we completed our first. I will hold our agreed time slot for a week for you, but you are welcome to take more time to make your decision, though I would not be able to guarantee the same slot.