Individual counselling
The counselling dynamic
Individual counselling is a one-on-one discussion between the Counsellor and the client. The two form an alliance, relationship or bond that promotes trust and personal growth.
This then creates an environment in which you can explore and better understand yourself. You might have a particular issue or issues on which you wish to focus and this exploration will help you to accept or change aspects of yourself that may not currently be working for you.
Understanding your own concept of the world and checking it with someone who is non-judgemental, in a safe and secure environment, can help to reframe your thinking and provide a more grounded approach to life.
If both the client and the Counsellor feel that it would be helpful, other family members could be invited to sessions to help explore fully issues that might only be able to be resolved with their input.
The counselling process
Individual counselling starts with a 50-minute assessment where the focus is on establishing a clear understanding of the counselling process, understanding your background and discussing the particular concerns and immediate challenges that you want to explore.
Following this assessment, we will be able to ascertain if we are the best placed organisation to help you and, if not, recommend who you should contact.
Hopefully we will be able to help and, if so, we’ll look to match you with the Counsellor best suited to your particular circumstances. This will include, if relevant, excluding any of our Counsellors whom you may know or who you feel are too close to your particular community/circle of friends.
Investing in the process
Although we would never turn away anyone needing our help because they could not afford to pay for sessions, we do know that a client is more invested in their therapy if they contribute to it financially.
Also, as a charity, we do need to ask for a contribution to cover our running costs.
To this end we charge £55 for the assessment and for each subsequent counselling session. If you are unable to pay this, please do contact us in confidence to discuss.
In order to be able to offer counselling to all those on our waiting list as soon as possible, we limit the number of individual counselling sessions conducted under our auspices to the equivalent of 24 weekly sessions, after which we review the situation.