Q & A

I understand how daunting the prospect of seeking counselling can be. With the benefit of my own experience of overcoming depression in my 20’s, as well as many years of experience as a professional counsellor working with the deepest issues, I can assure you your counselling experience with me will be safe, nurturing and tailored to suit your personal needs.

I use a range of proven therapy approaches, including CBT and Mindfulness to suit individual needs, as well as Emotional Healing Therapy when doing deep trauma counselling. My approach is given more depth and clarity by framing it within the “Five Step Process for Emotional Healing, Wisdom and Empowerment”, a therapeutic approach similar to “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), but developed independently over the last 30 years.

For someone new to counselling, or for someone who has not experienced a skilled therapist, it is hard to know what is possible at first. If you expect to have your problems solved in just one or two sessions, then you many indeed be disappointed. Personal problems that we seek counselling for are generally more complex than this. However, if you persist, I can guarantee that new possibilities with open up to you and that you will find new levels to your potential that will not only enable you to overcome your problems but you will grow in ways that will benefit you for the rest of your life.

Psychological problems are often created over a long period of time and so healing can also take time, although positive results can come quickly. A lot depends on your commitment to the process. If you really want the changes in your life to be significant and permanent, then time needs to be taken to work through the various layers of a problem, with each layer revealing deeper understandings and opportunities for healing. A real difference is usually experienced in around 6 to 12 sessions.

The Five Step Process highlights the key laws of consciousness that create healing, balance and clarity in the human mind. Laws of consciousness are like laws of physics. The important factor about such laws of consciousness is that they never change. This is what makes them natural laws. For instance, when you sincerely make an effort, on a daily basis, to treat yourself with loving kindness in the form of self-acceptance, in regards to the way you think about yourself and the way you act toward yourself, you are going to experience predictable positive results. This applies to everybody. This natural law of consciousness has a predictable and inevitable positive result on a mind that is in conflict with itself.

The Five Steps are:

1. Acceptance – accepting yourself, your circumstances and your feelings means you can start caring for yourself and start dealing with your problems.

2. Personal Responsibility – we are never a powerless victim. There is always something we can do to overcome our problems. Our mind, in particular, belongs to ourself. No one else can own it. With the right guidance, you can learn to take charge of your life. By positively accepting responsibility for our lives and the way we deal with our issues means we are ready to honour our true potential.

3. Let Go and Tune In – the active process of healing. We are ready to let go of seeing ourselves as powerless victims. We are ready to open our hearts to our own self and become our own best friend by listening to our feelings without judging them and learning to look after them, which, with the right guidance, we can do. We are ready to take the journey of healing, making peace with ourselves and gain resilience.

4. Live in the Now – we create our lives by what we do now. Worry, regret, resentment etc. are time wasters. We are wasting our time trying to control the past, the future, or someone else, and as a result, not effectively taking care of ourselves today. Our future is created by what we think and do today and every day. As we learn and grow, we become mindful of how we create our day. We can actively take charge of our lives.

5. Live the Process – Life is no longer a mystery. Being happy, fulfilled and resilient has a set of natural laws to guide us. To live a happy and successful life, it is essential that we are committing to living these laws, and in the process, learning more about them every day. When we live our live this way, our real potential is wide open to us.

There are standard fees for counselling, but I do my best to cater for everyone. If you really want to put in the effort and grow, I will find a way to help you do that in a way that will suit your budget. It is a matter of priorities also. How much is emotional health and harmony for the rest of your life worth? How important is this to you? Is it worth rearranging your life a little bit to accommodate this opportunity? At the end of the day, like all things, you will get out of it what you put into it.

No, but there are some requirements that apply to learning anything. Most importantly, you need to give it a chance. You may be searching for such a process because you want to improve your life. You may be suffering from emotional difficulties and confusion. You may be coming for help because you don’t yet know the solution to your problems. If you don’t give up, I can guarantee you will be able to overcome your problems with the help of a therapy process such as this.

Few of us realize how poorly we care for ourselves and what little regard we have for ourselves. However, a little honest self-reflection soon reveals the true picture, which comes as a bit of a shock to many. We are usually not aware of this because we are running on auto-pilot and caught up in our problems and the difficult circumstances around us. We can blame those circumstances for how we are feeling, and in some ways there is validity in this. However, if we look at ourselves squarely, we have to admit that the way we think has a lot to do with the problems we have. It is essential that we don’t judge ourselves over this. That is part of the problem. Having such a realisation is in fact a great opportunity to do something about it. The quality of our life is determined by how in touch with ourselves we are and how well we care for ourselves. We may not be able to control certain factors around us, but we all have the potential to choose how we are going to think and feel about it. Our own peace of mind is ultimately in our own control. The 5-Step Process first and foremost shows us how to build a loving and caring relationship with ourselves. My experience has shown that everything else falls into place from this. The benefits are all the good things that we want – love, peace, balance, self-respect, integrity, empowerment/resilience and so on.