Southsea Private Counselling Services (Skype & Portsmouth Hampshire)

'Pieta House Press Pack' © Joe Houghton

Knowing how many sessions we had agreed up front really helped me focus.

Private Portsmouth & Southsea Counselling.
Counselling with Dean Richardson.
What is Counselling?
Ethical Counselling.
Why choose Dean Richardson as your Counsellor?
A Helpful Initial Assessment Meeting.
Counselling Services.
Couples Counselling.
Individual’s Counselling.
Support Groups.
Skype Counselling .

Private Portsmouth & Southsea Counselling.

Counselling with Dean Richardson.

With over thirteen years’ experience, Dean Richardson’s Hampshire private counselling practice, in Portsmouth & Southsea, focuses on Individual’s Counselling, Couples Counselling and Support Groups. His private therapy services are available to all individuals and couples from Portsmouth, Southsea, Southampton, Fareham, Gosport, Havant & Hayling Island, northwards to Petersfield and eastwards to Chichester.

What is Counselling?

Counselling isn’t about telling someone how to get things right. It’s a very specialised form of therapy that requires years of training and years of practice before the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy will accredit a practitioner. As a qualified, accredited and experienced counsellor, Dean can help you to help yourself work through problems – whether deep or superficial – to the point where you don’t need to work with him any longer.

Ethical Counselling.

Within his therapy practice is an ethical approach to ensure you don’t become dependant on him or his therapeutic approach; allowing you to internalise the counselling process and even the therapeutic relationship itself so that you can leave counselling and carry on with your life less burdened than before.

Why choose Dean Richardson as your Counsellor?

Whilst it’s accurate to say that most therapists can work with most clients, it certainly is the relationship between client and counsellor that matters.

A Helpful Initial Assessment Meeting.

Dean offers a initial assessment session which covers:-

(i) Taking some administration details (name, address, contact telephone etc)
(ii) Talking through the ethics of counselling (how we will work together, what are the boundaries for our work, fees etc)
(iii) Giving you the time to tell your story (with assistance from the counsellor).

During this time Dean is checking to see if he thinks you and he can work together. Of course this is a mutual assessment (you are checking Dean and his way of working too) and by the end of the assessment a conversation will be in order about if carrying on with future sessions seems appropriate, discussing a referral to someone whose specialities may suit you better, or ending therapy there.

Counselling Services.

Couples Counselling.

'Couples Therapy' © Grace Weston Photography

When a couple relationships suffer conflicts & breakdowns and partners wish to engage a professional to help them understand what may be going on, couples may prefer to work with someone who remains neutral, doesn’t side with one partner or the other, and assists the partners in supporting them discover their own resolutions to their relationship problems.

Couples choose counselling due to experiencing a negative recent event, or one from years ago, infidelity, mistrust, life stages, birth, ageing, death, wishing to separate and so on. Some relationships struggle to manage certain conflicts.

In aiming to help the couple help themselves in understanding what’s going on in their relationship, the couple can teach themselves to become unstuck and move through relationship problems. With new information a couple can notices differences and use these to make changes (by themselves) for the better.

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Individual’s Counselling.

'Pieta House Press Pack' © Joe Houghton

All sorts of individuals come to counselling for all sorts of reasons. Those experiencing a negative recent event, or one from years ago, unexplained behaviour, infidelity, mistrust, life stages, relationships, aging, death … they all have an impact on an individual’s life – and counselling is there when you have temporarily lost your ability to manage on your own.

The counsellor does not impose a procedure, nor offer excrcises that if the client follows to the letter will discover that they are cured. Instead, the therapist and client engage in discussing the problems whilst, at the same time, a therapeutic relationship builds between then. This trusting, professional relationship can become the basis for the counselling work – using examples in the here and now (what’s happening between therapists and client) to help both understand the difficulties in real time. Working through problems in the present is an effective way of addressing problems from the past because … obvious as it may seem … we cannot change the past no matter how hard we try.

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Support Groups.

'Crop Circle' © .thana/Flickr

Sometimes, joining a therapeutic support group can help the LGBT individual recognise that they’re not struggling with their problems alone.

Groups not only discuss problems similar to each group member, but can also discuss “non-problems” (i.e. by the group discussing matters that are not the individual’s problem, the group can helpfully demonstrate life-management skills that are different to an individual’s personal difficulties).

Groups can be homogeneous (all members share similar personal-problems) or heterogeneous (members exhibit different problems), a closed group (the group starts with the same members that it finishes with) or open (the group allows new members to join and others to life during the life of the group).

Dean Richardson’s support groups are created “On Demand” – a between 6 and 8 participants are required for a new group to commence. If you’re interested in joining a group, contact Dean to discuss what’s currently scheduled.

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Skype Counselling .

Sometimes you find your ideal counsellor … and he works 100s of miles away from you. Fortunately, you can access Dean Richardson’s counselling services from your camera-enabled computer or Smartphone.

Simply install the free Skype software, and you can engage in counselling sessions with Dean using video conferencing.

Couples who are in a distance-relationship can also make use of Skype Couples Counselling – as Dean supports group conferencing (both of you – along with Dean – using Skype simultaneously with everyone seeing the other two people on their screen).

What’s Skype counselling like? Initially some people find video conferencing a little unusual, but a handy tip is that if you maximise the video window, looking at the computer feels like the person is in the room as you.

Want to work with Dean, but are unable to get to his Portsmouth location? Consider Skype Counselling.

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counselling and psycotherapy research volume 7 number 4 march 2007