What is Counselling

Counselling is a form of therapy called a talking therapy. There are many kinds of talking therapy; person centred, psychodynamic, transactional analysis, gestalt and cognitive behavioural therapy and many others.

Most counsellors specialise in one or two or more of these models and some counsellors only use one approach.

The common aim of each of these therapies is to assist the client to find solutions to his/her problems using the clients inner resources. In this way the conclusions you come to are owned by you and not the counsellor. These approaches facilitate this process. Counselling is not about giving advice. Counselling sessions usually last about 50 minutes. The number of sessions is agreed upon by client and counsellor.

What is Integrative Counselling

I mentioned that many counsellors may use one or more approaches. Integrative Counsellors use more than one model in their approach and during therapy. I am an integrative counsellor and use a variety of models appropriate to the clients needs. This is a very flexible approach as it enables me to treat the client without being restricted to one school of thought. I may use cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help a client to address anxiety problems, together with a person centred approach which empahsises the value of the individuals thoughts and feelings over their lifetime or a transactional analysis approach to help clarify relationship problems.