FAQs
Who do I work with?
I work with adults as individuals, couples or groups on a one to one basis for either short-term counselling or long-term psychotherapy depending on what we agree are your needs.
How do we work together?
Our weekly sessions are 50 minutes long and can be conducted via Zoom or in-person at my offices in Central and South London.
We will decide on your preferred way to work in our initial free, 15 minute consultation.
What's the difference between counselling and psychotherapy?
As a client, you may not really be able to tell the difference. Counselling is often shorter-term and psychotherapy tends to be longer-term, although this is not always the case. Psychotherapy is also typically used when there are more serious or complex mental health issues to explore and support. Psychotherapists typically complete a longer initial training programme, and if you are regulated by the UKCP (UK Council for Psychotherapists), which I am, you are required to evidence that you have rigorous training and experience in the area of complex mental health problems.
How long will we work together for?
I work with long-term and short-term clients - our sessions can be weekly and open ended or we may decide on a set number of weeks. Throughout the process we will check in and review how we are working together. I ask that if you should like to end the therapy, we contract to have at least one final session to assess our time working together and the progress made.
Is it completely confidential?
The contents of our sessions will be confidential. However, in order to work as effectively as possible with you and in keeping with my professional code of ethics, my work is supervised in clinical supervision.
If there are things going on for you that mean there is risk of harm to your or someone else, then it will be important for me to ensure all concerned are kept safe. In these circumstances, I may need to share information with relevant authorities. If this were to become an issue in one of our sessions, wherever possible and appropriate, we would talk this through in detail and work collaboratively to establish the most appropriate path of action.
Full details of my privacy policy can be found here
What is Transactional Analysis?
TA is a form of psychotherapy which focuses on relationships and communication both in the real world and within the therapy sessions.
The key philosophical assumptions of TA are:
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People are okay – this means that each of us has worth, value, and dignity as a human being. This principle carries itself directly into the therapeutic relationship. We are both equal and we share the responsibility of working on your goals. To make sure we are aligned we will have a clear agreement stating the goal of the therapy taking place.
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Everyone has the capacity to think – therefore we have all got the capacity to work out what we want and how to get there. My job is not to tell you what to do or think, but to guide and support you on your journey of self-reflection, help resolve any confusion you may experience on the way so that you can decide what is right for you.
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People decide their own destiny - based on early life experiences and beliefs they form about themselves. However, it’s within our power to change those decisions and in doing so change our destiny and reach our goals. In therapy we can explore the fixed beliefs you may hold about yourself and how they may have created barriers to you living the life you would like to live. We will challenge those beliefs and in doing so hopefully create new beliefs that will help rather than hinder you.
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Contracting is inherent to TA. You are expected to sign an administrative contract before our work commences and then we will contract on what we will work on as we move forward together.