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Working indoors

Meeting indoors is the typical setting, in a quiet space with resources at hand. My aim is to provide a comfortable, private space for you to explore and learn about yourself. We each have our own unique strengths, habits, vulnerabilities and needs. Discovery requires vulnerability, which requires safety.

Coloured pencils and drawing paper may be helpful sometimes
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Telephone/online counselling

My preferred way of working is face to face, in the same room. But on occasion I will agree to do a video session or even a series sessions. In the past I have agreed to continue working with someone who needs to travel for work and could only maintain regular sessions by meeting me online from a suitably safe space.

During lockdowns I worked extensively on telephone and video and am pleased to say it was mostly successful. For some clients, working remotely can even offer some advantages to face to face work. If eye contact and close proximity are discomfiting or off-putting for you, you might prefer a remote counsellor. Many of my colleagues have continued to work online.

For now I only use it as an auxiliary to face to face meetings with individual clients.

NB working with a couple or group online presents some particular challenges and I would usually not agree to it.

Decorative image of leaves nestling together
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Working outdoors

Eco-therapy or walk and talk therapy.

Meeting outdoors is an effective way to conduct therapy providing we understand the parameters and meet the challenges together. That said, nature and the local area provide a huge opportunities, inspirations and metaphor as well as encouraging calm, reflection, contemplation, acceptance, perspective… so many things that are helpful in the self-development process.

Walking, pausing, resting, exploring etc.

Setting challenges and observation exercises.

Changing pace and noticing our need to hurry or slow down.

Perhaps most importantly for me, walking side by side shifts us from head-to-head seating, which can so often lock us into thinking processes and encourages a journeying-together-perspective.

When outdoors, we may be utilising our senses and feelings as much or even more than our verbal capacities. By taking this more embodied approach, working outdoors can deepen the experience and integrate clients in ways that standard therapy conversations struggle to do.

Contracting

But it is not always right for every client, so I insist on a staged assessment which allows us to clearly establish whether this process will suit you and whether we can work safely in this way. This includes a preparatory conversation – by phone or video-call, a meeting outside and an assessment by email/phone, before meeting outside.

Sometimes we have contracted to explore a few sessions outside followed by some inside. Each step provides reflection time to absorb what you are learning and help us build a bespoke therapy for you.

Sunlight through winter trees over a woodland path