Therapy can be useful to anyone who wants to improve the way they relate to themselves, others, and the world. This could take a multitude of forms. For example, It may be that you are missing out on opportunities due to fear of failure, you feel stuck in a relationship, job, or friendship group, or that whatever you do never seems to quieten the cruel self-critical voice in your head. There is no need to feel like you meet the criteria for any clinically recognised condition such as PTSD, Major Depression or Anxiety.
Some people come to therapy with clear goals, some come with a general sense that their life could be better in some way. Many find that their goals evolve as therapy progresses: they become more specific, more realistic or ambitious, and new goals appear as people develop new insights into what is possible.
If any of this is resonating with you, I suggest you Contact Me to talk about what brings you to seek therapy and how we could work together.
The first session is all about you feeling safe, comfortable, and listened to, and me feeling like I have an understanding of what brings you here, how you are now, and us agreeing where we want to go in therapy. The first session has more structure built into it that most other sessions. For example, in the first session I’ll ask you to fill a questionnaire about how your last week has been, and we will go over things like confidentiality and our working agreement. In subsequent sessions the time is more tailored to exactly what you want to bring to that particular session.
Great question! It’s probably the one I’ve been asked most since I qualified as a CBT therapist and there is good reason to have this concern! Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), especially in the UK, is very often used in a format, such as within the NHS, which is very time-limited and there is lots of pressure to meet mass-scale quantitative measures. Unsurprisingly, in this context it is harder to create a warm and welcoming environment with time to be holistic and expansive with treatment.
However, once CBT is taken out of that time-pressured quantitatively-focused context, it can be a very accessible therapeutic method that facilitates greater awareness of our emotions, behaviours, thoughts, and how they interact. There is the option of exploring the past, the development of coping strategies, and many tools for exploring new goals and behaviours.
If you are interested in a more in-depth exploration of this issue, check out my blog article.
On the Contact page you can write to me either via email or the contact form expressing an interest in therapy and we can arrange a free confidential phone conversation of up to 15 minutes. I use this conversation to find out what you are looking for in therapy and address any concerns you have. If we agree to work together we will arrange a first full session to be conducted over Zoom or another suitable online platform.
The most important factor for therapy to meet a client’s goals is the quality of the relationship between therapist and client.1 It has also been found that the client, rather than the therapist, is a better judge of that quality.2 It is therefore essential you listen to your instincts and, if you are comfortable doing so, talk them over with people you trust or even the therapist if that feels OK. Ultimately, if it doesn’t feel like it is working, then it probably isn’t.
However, we must be careful not to mistake effort or some discomfort as signs of things not working. Therapy is not easy, but it should never feel punishing, humiliating or like you cannot express yourself.
Firstly by acknowledging that it inevitably exists, as it is a relationship between a paid professional and someone seeking help. It is my job to hold this power wisely and with accountability. I also aim to alleviate the power imbalance by encouraging clients to disagree with me when they want to, and by consistently checking in that they think we are following their goals, making it clear they are ultimately guiding the process.
People come to therapy from all kinds of backgrounds and social classes, and I want to minimise the financial barrier to people working with me. To some people, £50 is small change, whilst to others it would mean cutting back on the weekly food shopping. I therefore ask those who can afford to pay £50, or more, to pay this to enable others with less financial privilege to access the help they need.
It has its pros and cons. It removes the time and cost of the commute to/from therapy and allows people to have therapy in a familiar environment. Some people really appreciate doing therapy from the comfort of their own home; others would welcome a change of scene. Connectivity issues online are very rare depending on your connection speed, but some people miss the physical face-to-face contact. In my experience, working remotely is not a significant barrier to forming a strong therapeutic bond and the same tools and structure of sessions can be used.
Furthermore, with the ongoing Covid-19 situation worldwide, online therapy is becoming more and more the first or even the only option for therapy.
The simple answer is there is no important difference. I call what I do counselling and therapy, as do most counsellors.
The wider picture is that counselling is a type of (psycho)therapy. On the NHS website, counselling is defined as “talking therapy that involves a trained therapist listening to you and helping you find ways to deal with emotional issues”. As this definition highlights, there is generally a strong focus on talking. Other forms of mental health treatment like dance or art therapy, which involve less or no talking, are unlikely to be considered counselling, but they are obviously therapy. I googled the root of the word therapy and apparently it comes from the Greek for ‘healing’ or ‘curing’.
Also, confusingly, therapy seems to have become synonymous with psychotherapy. When someone affirms uncharitably to another “you need therapy!” we know they are probably not referring to chemotherapy or massage therapy!
I would normally suggest weekly sessions to begin with. Twice-weekly sessions may be appropriate in some circumstances, and as therapy progresses you may also want to change to fortnightly sessions, for example. Even once we have had an ending I am always open to discuss future one-off sessions or starting regular sessions again.
The length of time people see therapists varies wildly. Some people appear to get what they need from a few sessions, whilst most benefit from having more time. It depends on many things, for example: the severity of your difficulties, what your expectations are, and your commitment to working on relevant challenges between sessions.
The answer to both of these questions depends ultimately on your needs, and my job is to help avoid the creation of dependency on therapy, whilst also offering all of the support that you need.