1:1 Virtual Counselling and Therapy online, over the phone, or in-person.
First off let me just say that we are really sorry you need to be here - because the fact that you’re reading this suggests that you’re struggling right now.
And that sucks.
You might know what’s causing you to feel rubbish, or you might not really know at all.
Either way, counselling and therapy can help you to explore why you feel how you feel, and work out how to change the things that are troubling you for a happier life.
1:1 Virtual Counselling and Therapy online, over the phone, or in-person.
First off, we are really sorry you need to be here - because the fact that you’re reading this suggests that you’re struggling right now.
And that sucks.
You might know what’s causing you to feel rubbish, or you might not really know at all.
Either way, counselling and therapy can help you to explore why you feel how you feel, and work out how to change the things that are troubling you for a happier life.
What can counselling and psychotherapy help me with?
Resolving depression and anxiety
Learning to manage and bear grief
Understanding your difficult feelings and using them to identify and meet you needs
Building up confidence, self-acceptance and a sense of self-worth
Realising the things that are keeping you small and stuck so you can move forward
Becoming more resilient, and able to cope when things get tough
To feel heard, and seen, and validated
Learning how to create healthy boundaries, which will improve your relationship with yourself and your relationships with others
Counselling exists to help you realise that you’re not ‘broken’, ‘deranged’, ‘defective’ or otherwise ‘faulty’.
You just need some support.
Counselling helps you realise that the sh*tty way you feel isn’t because you’re not good enough parent, or a spouse, or a friend, or an employee or boss etc.
That actually, you’re not being ‘over-dramatic’, or ‘going crazy’, or ‘being ridiculous’ for feeling how you feel, or for thinking what you think.
Counselling helps you to get self-compassionately curious about your thoughts and beliefs. It helps you notice and modify the negative stories you tell yourself in the back of your mind, everyday.
Why does that help?
You can change what you don’t notice.
And once you notice the stuff that’s been holding you back, you are better able to do something about it.
It finally becomes possible to break your big, complicated feelings and experiences down into bite-size pieces, so you can process them and move the hell on with being happy!
Good, eh?
“Ali is a properly amazing counsellor. I wanted someone very non-judgemental and caring but who would not shy away from talking about the issues that I have spent ages not talking about. I got this and loads more in Ali. She is a bit of a magician in that she can weave together bits and pieces that come up in a session and come up with a brilliant insight into what is going on in my head, explain it in a very clear way and then help you to work through it. I would wholeheartedly recommend her to anyone.”
“Ali is an amazing counsellor. I wanted someone non-judgemental and caring but who would not shy away from talking about the issues that I have spent ages not talking about. I got this and more in Ali. She can weave together bits and pieces that come up in a session and come up with a brilliant insight into what is going on in my head, explain it in a very clear way and then help you to work through it.”
How much does 1:1 online or in-person counselling and therapy cost?
We start with an assessment, which takes an hour and costs £85
Counselling sessions cost £65 per session and last 50 minutes, usually once a week, for as long as you find them useful.
How many sessions of counselling and therapy will I need?
Great question
The honest answer? We don’t know. Ultimately, t’s our job to eventually make ourselves redundant. We don’t want to hang onto you forever. We want you to use therapy for as long as you find our work helpful and then we want you to go off and live your best life, courtesy of the relational skills we have helped you build up. So, I guess we would say, leave therapy when:
It no longer feels useful.
You feel like your emotions have become manageable & you can handle things now.
You believe that when life throws you down, you can allow yourself to feel it, and then bounce right back!
You’ll know when you’re ready
Obviously, people are all different and their problems are too. That’s why we don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to sessions - how many sessions and what you’ll talk about will be completely dependent on what’s going on for you and on your personal situation.
If you have the option to ‘do it until you feel done’ then that is generally the best thing.
But we know that not everyone has access to the time and money to do that.
That’s why short-term counselling is an option.
We do what we can with the time we have available. And actually, it’s pretty amazing what you can do with 12 or 20 sessions, if that’s all we can do.
We’ll always do our best to keep things as accessible as possible so that you can get the help you need.
Counselling: The work of
Un-Bonsai
We tend to treat ourselves, our partners & our children like human bonsai trees –
We try to prune, bend and stretch ourselves into what we think the right shape will be, and wonder why things often go wrong
Here’s the thing….
You are not a bloody bonsai tree, ok?
No one knows how the bonsai tree feels about being shaped, pruned, and wired into place.
But we do know that people who’ve had other people shaping them via criticism, inflexible, punitive standards, or the giving and withholding of love and approval, tend to become sad, ashamed people, who struggle to feel good enough.
They might struggle with:
Low self-esteem
Poor confidence
Wobbly personal boundaries
Complicated relationships
A persistent sense of dissatisfaction
Depression
Anxiety
And so we have to basically do the work of ‘Un-Bonsai’.
What the frilly heck is the
‘work of ‘Un-Bonsai’?
It’s all the stuff we do in therapy to help you to realise and absorb the fact that you are already good enough.
It takes time…but it’s worth the wait, because there are few things more beautiful in this world than watching a previously hurt and self-loathing, anxious, depressed, ‘not good enough’ human being begin to soften, relax into themselves and start to bloom.
And that’s what we can help you to do.