If you contact me via email or text, we will usually first need to work out if my availability matches with yours to see if we would be able to find a mutually convenient time to meet regularly should we wish to begin working together. If this looks feasible, I will then offer you a free-of-charge 15-minute phone call to talk over what brings you to therapy and to answer any questions you may have before deciding if we want to arrange an initial session, for which I charge my session fee. This can be in person or online, but it would usually be in the mode we would continue to use if we began working together. We would also need to discuss if my fee feels affordable to you on an ongoing basis. 

If we set up an initial session, I would usually then share my working agreement with you via email. This sets out the important boundaries around our work, which is also known as the frame. These are the set time and day of the sessions, the fee level, how and when to pay the fee, confidentiality, data protection, working online/in person, and how we would deal with cancellations and holidays. Our mutual understanding and agreement about these aspects creates the safe container for our work so we can make full use of the space within to explore whatever brings you to therapy.

An initial session provides an opportunity for us to get a sense of how it may be to work together. Towards the end, I will either offer you a couple of days to have a think about whether it felt ok or not, or we may decide on the spot. If I don’t think I’m the right person for you at this stage I will say so, and if working with me doesn’t feel right to you, I encourage you to say so too. Sometimes we may discover we have some shared connections that would make working together difficult.

If we do agree to work together, we will usually have a check-in after about six sessions to consider how we’re getting on and to assess whether that feels like enough or if it feels right to continue. The length of counselling depends on you and the complexity of the issue. Six sessions can be enough if the issue you wish to work through is very defined and you already have some insight and understanding. Clients usually feel they need more sessions than that. It can be hard for me to say how many sessions you will need altogether, but we can discuss this as we go along and work out what feels manageable.

We will usually start each session talking together about whatever feels uppermost to you. Initially, I focus on providing a safe, confidential, and empathic space for you to start unpacking whatever has brought you to therapy. As our work develops, we might be able to start identifying patterns and making links, deepening our understanding in a way that I believe can allow you to find a more flexible and compassionate way of responding to the challenges and difficulties of your life. I may offer my own sense of things, but I respect that you are the expert on you.

I work relationally, which means working with what happens between us, and being interested in what we co-create together and how this might help us to understand what happens for you outside the therapy room.  I welcome and value any kind of feedback from you in our sessions as discussing this can really help to take our work together forward.

Sometimes I find offering clients creative opportunities to express themselves and integrate head, feelings and body can help to take our work forward such as using art materials, stones, movement or breathing exercises. This kind of work would always be mutually agreed between us.