How I work
How I work
Starting counselling means walking into something you can't quite picture yet. Here's as clear a picture as I can give you.
Before the first session
It starts with a free 20-minute call — by telephone or online, whichever you’d rather. You don’t need to prepare anything or explain yourself well. You can tell me as much or as little as you want to.
I’ll describe how I work, you can ask me anything, and we’ll both get a sense of whether this feels like a fit. There’s no pressure to decide on the call, and no follow-up from me if you decide against it.
If we do go ahead, I’ll send you a working agreement — a plain-English document covering confidentiality and its limits, fees, cancellations and how we’ll work together. We’ll both sign it before the first session, so nothing is unclear once we start.
The first session
The first session is mostly about getting to know each other. I’ll want to understand what’s brought you here, what you’re hoping for, and what you expect from counselling — including anything you’ve tried before that helped, and anything that really didn’t.
You are allowed to not know. “Something isn’t right and I can’t name it” is a completely legitimate starting point, and a common one.
We’ll also talk about how you work best. What helps you think. What makes it harder. Whether you’d rather have questions in advance, or a few minutes of quiet at the start, or a clear structure to each session. None of that is a special request — it’s just useful information.
What happens after that
Sessions run for 50 minutes, usually weekly, though fortnightly works well for some people and we can talk about what fits your life and your budget.
Most of the time we talk. Sometimes we do something else — drawing, writing, working with objects, movement, imagining a conversation you can’t have in real life. Gestalt uses these because some material simply doesn’t arrive in tidy sentences, and because doing something can reveal what describing it can’t. It is always an invitation, never an instruction, and “no thanks” is a full answer.
Underneath all of it, what makes counselling work isn’t a technique. It’s the relationship. Being consistently met by someone who doesn’t flinch, doesn’t judge and doesn’t try to hurry you along is, for many people, the active ingredient. That takes time to build, and it’s worth the time.
How long it takes
That’s genuinely up to you. Some people come for a handful of sessions with something specific in mind. Others stay for months, or longer, and go deeper. Both are valid; neither is better.
We’ll review how things are going regularly, and you’re free to stop at any point. If you do want to finish, I’d usually suggest a final session to close things properly rather than an abrupt stop — endings matter, and a good one can be part of the work. But that’s a suggestion, not a condition.
Adjustments, always available, never a favour
You don’t need a diagnosis to ask for any of these, and you don’t need to explain why.
If something would help and it isn't on this list, ask. The worst that happens is I say I can't do that one.
What you say here, stays here — with a few limits I’ll be upfront about
What you bring to sessions is confidential. I won’t discuss you with your GP, your family or anyone else without your agreement.
There are limits, and I’d rather you knew them now than found out later. I discuss my work in regular supervision, without identifying you. I keep brief, securely stored session notes. And in the rare circumstances where there’s a serious risk to your life or someone else’s, or where the law requires it, I may need to break confidentiality. Wherever it’s possible and safe, I would talk to you first.
All of this is set out plainly in the working agreement before we start.