Services
Counselling
Problems in our lives often feel very private, and we sometimes feel we do not wish to discuss them with friends and family. Or, we may have talked about things with family members and friends, but not been able to reach a solution. Counselling can provide a safe and private place for working through any kind of issue which is getting in the way of you leading the life you want to. I use a variety of approaches, tailored according to each client's specific needs, but all of which are respectful and gentle, to enable my clients to develop the tools they need to live the life they imagine
The issues that have brought you to counselling may stem from your past, such as childhood abuse, or relate to your adult life, such as redundancy or marriage difficulties. It may be something personal to you, something which has been thrown up by your career, or it might be a relationship which is not going the way you had hoped it would.
Whatever the issue, the approaches I use should be able to help you move forwards and make the changes you need to live a more fulfilled and contented life.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a method that integrates sensorimotor processing with cognitive and emotional processing in the treatment of trauma. This method is especially beneficial for clinicians working with dissociation, emotional reactivity or flat affect, frozen states or hyperarousal and other PTSD symptoms.
Read more on the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute's website here.
Family Counselling
Family Counselling helps people in a close relationship help each other. It enables family members, couples and others who care about each other to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely, to understand each other’s experiences and views, appreciate each other’s needs, build on strengths and make useful changes in their relationships and their lives. Individuals can find Family Counselling helpful, as an opportunity to reflect on important relationships and find ways forward. Research shows Family Counselling is useful for children, young people and adults experiencing a very wide range of difficulties and experiences.
Clinical Supervision
Lisa is a trained Supervisor offering integrative supervision to both student and qualified counsellors one to one or in small groups.
For me supervision should be a vibrant experience which is engaging, challenging, encouraging and genuinely supportive. I really enjoy giving supervision and am enthusiastic about developing a collegial interaction and a safe and secure relationship of trust, whereby supervisees feel able to be honest about their client work, their fears or concerns as well as their triumphs. Supervision is a learning process enabling a constructive reflection of client work, counselling practice and the counselling process to take place. If you want to grow and develop your practice as a therapist rather than just tick a box, then this is the supervision for you.
Supervision is an ethical requirement of the BACP, as well as being a requirement for some agencies and organisations. It ensures accountability and guidance for those of us working with vulnerable others. Many of us work in isolation with our clients and supervision helps to ensure we maintain our boundaries and our professionalism. The Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions that Lisa adheres to supports us in dealing with the varied ethical dilemmas that can arise in within the counselling relationship.
Play Therapy
Play Therapy helps children understand confused feelings and upsetting events that they haven't had the chance to sort out properly. Rather than having to explain what is troubling them, as adult therapy usually expects, children use play to communicate at their own level and at their own pace, without feeling interrogated or threatened. Children receive emotional support and can learn to understand more about their own feelings and thoughts. Sometimes they may re-enact or play out traumatic or difficult life experiences in order to make sense of their past and cope better with their future. Children may also learn to manage relationships and conflicts in more appropriate ways.
The outcomes of Play Therapy may be general e.g. a reduction in anxiety and raised self-esteem, or more specific such as a change in behaviour and improved relations with family and friends.
Counselling for Adolescents
Counselling aims to help you deal with and overcome issues that are causing emotional pain or making you feel uncomfortable. It provides a safe, confidential and regular space for you to talk and explore difficult feelings. The counsellor is there to support you and respect your views. They won't usually give advice, but will help you find your own insights into and understanding of your problems.
Counselling can help you:
• cope with a bereavement or relationship breakdown
• cope with redundancy or work-related stress
• explore issues such as sexual identity
• deal with issues preventing you achieving your ambitions
• deal with feelings of depression or sadness, and have a more positive outlook on life
• deal with feelings of anxiety, helping you worry less about things
• understand yourself and your problems better
• feel more confident
• develop a better understanding of other people's points of view
In most cases, it takes a number of sessions before the counselling starts to make a difference, and a regular commitment is required to make the best use of the therapy.
What to expect from counselling:
During your counselling sessions, you'll be encouraged to express your feelings and emotions.
Counselling can often involve talking about difficult or painful feelings and, as you begin to face them, you may feel worse in some ways. However, with the help and support of your therapist, you should gradually start to feel better.
By discussing your concerns with you, the counsellor can help you gain a better understanding of your feelings and thought processes, as well as identifying ways of finding your own solutions to problems.
It can be a great relief to share your worries and fears with someone who acknowledges your feelings and is able to help you reach a positive solution.
Internal Family Systems
It is now commonly accepted knowledge in psychological circles that the human mind is multiple in nature. This means that we are not one personality, but many throughout the day. The phrase “multiple personalities” is not so much a disorder as it is a natural condition of our minds. We feel a multitude of ways throughout the day, which often conflict and confound us.
Understanding our behaviour and developing a personal character we respect and enjoy spending time with starts with learning how to listen to all the different voices of our diverse psyche. These different aspects of our personalities are not so much sub conscious as they are unconscious of each other. A part (personality perspective) can take the stage for a few hours and we can feel that is entirely who we are. And then a few hours later, they step off the stage and a totally different (sometimes opposite) part of us begins to express concerns about our previous expressions. This internal conflict does not have to be an ongoing misery. Like with any family, we need to take time to sit down and listen to all the different perspectives and concerns. These parts work sessions online teach how to separate your attention from a single aspect of your personality and see it in a larger context of many aspects that comprise your unique being.
Very often difficult experiences from our past freeze part of our personality in that time period and when something reminds us of that past pain, the part of us still suffering takes over our awareness. Like a dragonfly in amber, there is a part of us for whom that challenging event has not yet ended. Taking time to go into those memories and retrieve that part of ourselves can release us from the burden of the past and enable us to enjoy the present moment fully. Also called soul retrieval, a parts work session is a powerful way to reunite young aspects of ourselves with our grown adult self.
If you feel conflicted about a situation in life or are having a hard time making a decision, you might find these parts work sessions online to be a helpful tool to uncover resistance and blocks.
Like a meadow of different kinds of plants, flowers, and pollinators, we are a diverse system of attitudes, beliefs, and feelings all contained within one person.
The human mind is multiple in nature. It argues with itself and each side of the argument has a valid reason for its perspective. When we try to hold our personality to one consistent way of thinking and feeling, we inevitably let ourselves down because it is not in our nature to remain in one enduring perspective. We are comprised of a variety of attitudes and beliefs. The mind is a like village of aspects all with unique concerns, gifts, and insights to offer. These different aspects are called “parts” in the IFS worldview. And the work of an IFS session is to listen to all our parts with curiosity and compassion. To do this we develop an awareness of the Self.
Rather than fight with all the different parts within us, this ground-breaking approach to self-guided therapy teaches us how to include, listen to, and support all the different parts of our personality. This not only deepens our understanding of ourselves but also helps us relate better to everyone around us. Through IFS work we can release destructive behaviors and compulsive addictions by becoming a compassionate listener to all sides of the issue. Developed by Richard Schwartz over 30 years ago, the IFS approach to problem-solving is proving to be wildly successful in a variety of fields.
Play Therapy image courtesy of Elizabeth Morris - www.elizabethmorrisprints.co.uk