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I work primarily as a psychodynamic counsellor with individuals … and work as a systemic and psychodynamic counsellor in couple counselling. I am accredited by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy – verifying my qualifications and experience.
This article focuses upon my individual counselling work. For couple work see these articles.
Introduction
Summary.
- Counselling is a weekly commitment – appointments are on the same day & time and at the same location with the same counsellor.
- Couples must attend together – we may only meet separately after this is discussed & agreed.
- Our first appointment is an assessment for counselling. Counselling may only follow after an assessment has been completed. An individual assessment is usually one session, a couples assessment is usually four sessions.
- Our counselling work is either an open-ended agreement, or an agreed fixed-number of sessions.
- Session fees are due on the day of the appointment.
- Sessions cancelled within two working days are payable.
- Individual work is psychodynamic-based, couple work is systemic & psychodynamic-based.
Counselling is a collaborative process between client and counsellor which requires both counsellor and client to be actively involved. Counselling is not a process that is “done to you” by a therpist, rather it is conversational in format and needs both counsellor and client to be committed, motivated and involved for the process to be of use to the client.
I work with individuals or couples and the length of counselling that I offer can be in one of two forms: short-term/brief or open-ended – depending on the needs and the capacity of the clients and a discussion of the presenting issues (the assessment).
As a psychodynamic counsellor I do not prescribe a course of action for a client, but I will help you explore your personal distresses and issues alongside you in order to help you gain insight and help you find your own solution for a better way forward. I will listen to your concerns and respond to you in a non-judgemental manner, respecting your values and your life choices.
My Basic Framework.
NB: with individual work the term “client” refers to the person coming for counselling. With couple work I use the term “client” to refer much more toward the couple’s relationship, not particularly to the two individuals.
Read: “How to get the best out of your therapist”I believe that unresolved experiences from a person’s past can continually replay in a person’s life, attempting to seek a better outcome than was previously experienced. This is why, for example, some people can end up in relationships – one after another – where they always seem to experience the same problems again and again, or a bad situation at work that seems to crop up again … and again.
Using psychodynamic theories as my advanced theoretical basis for individual work, and psychodynamic and systemic methodologies for couple work, and employing basic counselling skills, I will work with you at helping improve your awareness of yourself (of each other in couple work) and the problems that you bring to counselling. I do this by listening to what you bring to each session. I listen not only to what you say, and to what might not be being said, too (a sort of “reading between the lines”). As I get to know you better I begin to watch for patterns in your experiences. My role is to help you increase your self-awareness and help you gain a better understanding of what drives and motivates you. I do this by offering you feedback, sometimes offering questions that make you think, checking out things with you that I’ve heard you say, sometimes challenging you about things that seem unclear to you and/or me and, basically, trying to help the both of us clearly understand what’s going on.
Some parts of how I use a holding, therapeutic framework:-
- Sessions are once a week, same day, same time, same room, same counsellor.
- Sessions start at a particular time and end after 50 minutes, even if you arrive late.
- The session contains our work – I won’t meet with you outside of our counselling work.
- You can talk about anything – I won’t express judgement.
- We focus upon your story (and, as couples, the story of the relationship), and subject-matter.
- I won’t advise you or tell you what to do – instead we’ll work with you finding solutions that work for you.
- Our work is intended to develop your insight, awareness of unconscious processes & self-awareness.
- In couple work, awareness of the relationship system & historic influences that may be trapping you in patterns.
“It’s the relationship that matters!” – this is such an important phrase that it was used as the title of the BACP conference a few years ago. It means that it matters less which type of theoretical model I use when working with a client, and more about the working relationship that will begin to form between us. With a good-enough working relationship, this forms the basis upon which much helpful work can be done.
I also follow the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s My Ethical Framework.Ethical Framework for Counselling and Psychotherapy/permalink].
What can counselling help with?
I have written separate pages for this topic:
Individuals: click here.
Couples: click here.
Starting a session.
Apart from the usual greetings, and apart from the first couple of sessions when you’re getting used to the process, I will usually wait for you to begin each session in your own time and whatever is in the forefront of your mind. You may speak about anything you like. Topics that are new for you this week, or something that you remembered from our last session. Perhaps a dream that you had during the week that seems significant, or something to be celebrated. It’s totally up to you.
I will listen to what you have to say, and I’ll follow where you want to go whilst bearing in mind the reasons why you came to counselling, the issues that you’re having in life, and any patterns that I’m beginning to notice as you speak.
Making changes.
Over time, with greater understanding of themselves (and their limitations, of course), clients can begin to grow and to choose to make changes in their lives. Changes can be painful, and sometimes scary. Changes can sometimes become easy and second nature. Support is always available in the counselling session. As you make changes in your life the need for counselling can become less and less.
Conversations!
I believe that counselling & psychotherapy allows all sorts of conversations to take place that wouldn’t normally take place on social situations. You might be surprised by the number of conversations that a client and counsellor can have:-
- Matters around the focus of the counselling
- Matters that are avoiding the focus of the counselling
- I’m not sure counselling is doing what I thought it would do.
- Family members and friends
- Things that happened this week
- Breaks and holidays
- Money
- Work problems
- “What you said last week didn’t help…”
- Do we really understand each other?
- Needing to alter the session time/day – or “I cannot come to the next session”
- Ending the counselling
… are just a few examples!
A major purpose of conversations with a counsellor is to allow for improved insight on behalf of the client.
Conversation Example.
A client, for example, who presented with problems in their relationships around not being able to commit, may not recognise their part in the problem. Depending on the counsellor’s experience of working with the client, the client might benefit from the counsellor wondering out loud about recent missed sessions, arriving late, booking other appointments that have made attending counselling impossible, forgetting money and so on. The counsellor might interpret that the client is showing difficulties in committing to the counselling relationship (thus unconsciously repeating in the here-and-now the presenting problem for the counselling and client to work with). If counsellor and client and curious enough, and the matter can be looked at with interest (working through any difficult feelings) the client may benefit from learning about their previously-unknown behaviour.
In part, it can be a counsellor’s role to help the client recognise repeating patterns – and it’s up to the style of the counsellor to share this interpretation in a palatable way that the client can hear. “Having a conversation” about this might be seen as sharing curiosity, inviting the client to be curious about the repetition too … in the hope of avoiding the client feeling as though they are being persecuted for simply not turning up to sessions.
With couples, my role as counsellor is to act as a form of mirror so that the couple are able to see their relationship from a different perspective. I am curious toward the relationship and toward the individuals’ behaviour toward each other within the relationship. I attempt to gain information because information reveals differences – and differences are the relationship. Curiosity leads to information which leads to opportunities to perturb the relationship system which leads to opportunities for the relationship to be altered in ways that help the couple.
“Conversations” can useful.
Ending counselling.
Open-ended counselling.
Of course, counselling will come to an end at some point. In open-ended counselling – where a set number of counselling sessions has not been agreed upon (for example, when a set number of sessions is funded by an Employee Assistance Programme) another way must be used to determine if the focus of the counselling work has been addressed, and the counselling is coming to an end.
It is not unusual for either the counsellor or the client (and sometimes both) to begin recognising that maybe the counselling work has addressed sufficiently the main focus of the original contract, or the most recent discussion about what the counselling is focussing upon. If it is agreed that the focus of the work has been worked through sufficiently that the original distress is much reduced, and the client’s needs from counselling are diminising, then it can be good practice for client and counsellor to discuss together what might be a good enough ending; e.g. if setting an ending date, or number of sessions, or a recognise anniversary, or some other way of agreeing the ending at some agreed future point would be a good idea.
Upon reaching such an agreement both client and counsellor work towards the ending – perhaps reviewing the work, noticing what has changed, noticing how the client is nowadays – before client and counsellor finally saying goodbye to each other.
Brief/focal counselling.
When appropriate, brief/focal counselling may have been agreed between client and counsellor and a set number of sessions will likely have been agreed too. In this case, the ending is already known between client and counsellor, and is known at the beginning of the therapy. The end is always in sight during the counselling work.
It is not just a case of counting down the number of sessions until the client no longer attends counselling. Saying goodbye is still appropriate, and perhaps a review of the counselling work is suitable as with open-ended counselling.
This has been a brief overview of how I work as an individual- and as a couples counsellor.
Related Reading:
Counselling Couples in Relationships: Introduction to the Relate Approach (Wiley Series in Brief Therapy & Counselling)RELATE is the largest couple-counselling agency in the UK, offering over 300,000 hours of counselling each year. This book presents the theories and practices which make up the RELATE approach. In addition to the material on couple counselling, the psychology of couples' relationships is explored.
