To work as a counsellor, it is necessary to have a framework for how people develop and think and function, and then to work in a way which is consistent with this.  I base my practice on what has come to be known as the ‘Person-Centred’ philosophy and approach and which was first expounded by Carl Rogers in the 1950s.  It views each person as having qualities and characteristics which can become distorted as the result of influences in their life.  We function and interact with others according to how we have learnt to survive over the years.  But because past influences and experience play such an important part, we don’t necessarily function in a way that best suits us now.  

Most of our difficulties and suffering coming from holding on... to worn-out ideas, to someone else's beliefs about the world, to memories as sacred icons, to habits which have stopped helping us, to the person we were not the person we are... 

From the work of Martin Buber and Carl Rogers, I bring a focus on the process of the client in the way s/he interacts with the world and I teach and work with mindfulness as the means of cultivating flow, an awareness of direction and a rhythm for living.

It is the job of the counsellor empathise with where the client finds her/himself and to help understand what’s going on now and what is getting in the way of now being everything it might be

The person-centred approach looks uses the relationship of the counsellor with the client to re-evaluate influences and undo conditioning which is hindering us.  To this I bring a long experience of working with how  we function as people, how we very often get in our own way and obstruct ourselves from realising our potential.  In anyone’s life situation there are things which can’t be changed, but the effect they have, depends very much on our attitude, both to ourselves and to what’s going on around us.

A lot of the work of the counsellor is in helping the client release themselves from the assumptions and patterns which waste effort and energy and get nowhere.

It is truly amazing where we can go if we set ourselves free.

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