Therapy and Coaching for Lasting Change

If you are feeling unhappy or dissatisfied with one or more aspects of your life, it is usually because at some level your needs are not being met. Many unhappy people just keep on keeping on and others might engage in self-defeating activities to compensate for or distract themselves from overt or underlying issues (self-medication methods can include over-eating, binge-drinking, over-spending). Depending on the level of discomfort or dissatisfaction you are experiencing, you can of course just keep going and if you are using some sort of distraction approach, you can escape for a little while. Many people, however, come to the realisation that they want some sort of durable change in their lives and that quick fixes are only a temporary diversion. If you want help in finding deeper and more lasting ways of identifying, understanding and responding to your needs, this is often easier to achieve with the help of a trained professional. 

Why not just talk to a friend? Many people find that this does help enormously but there are times when you might feel you don’t want to do that: perhaps because you feel your friends have heard it all before and you feel you don’t want to burden them or perhaps because you can’t really say what you want to say because they might be hurt or confused or frustrated or they might judge you in some way. It can also be the case that friends can find it difficult to be objective quite simply because they are your friends.

The relationship you have with your counsellor is a professional relationship with the sole purpose of focusing on you and your thoughts and feelings about your situation so there is no need to “filter” what you say. This has the benefit of being able to simply “tell it how it is” without having to worry about what the other person might think.

In your counselling sessions with me, I will use a wide range of active listening, questioning and analysis techniques to assist you to clarify, explore and increase your awareness and choice in relation to whatever issue(s) you wish to improve or resolve. Unlike some TV shows where counselling is portrayed as a simplistic (and sometimes brutal) display of one-upmanship, real-life counselling is not about giving advice or telling you what to do – my primary purpose as your counsellor is to help you to find workable approaches and solutions to your issues and improve your quality of life.

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