I approach every client individually and seek to explore their lives, looking for meaning and understanding of the client’s experience and particularly what may be troubling them or causing them difficulties or distress. While very much within the context of mental health, as a counselling psychologists I adopt a holistic and humanistic stance.
My approach is to look to the person’s experience rather than focusing on diagnoses, disorders and illnesses (as within medicine and psychiatry). The aim is to work-through difficult experiences, with the intention of always focusing on the individual’s needs, reducing psychological distress and enhancing psychological change and growth.
I do not prescribe medication; however, I work with clients and, where relevant, with GPs and consultant psychiatrists regarding the client’s use of psychotropic medication.
“Counselling psychology is a distinct profession within the field of psychology whose specialist focus is the application of psychological and psychotherapeutic theory to clinical practice. It holds a humanistic value base that goes beyond the traditional understanding of human nature as passive and linear and views human beings and their experience as inherently dynamic, embodied and relational in nature. Its aim is to reduce psychological distress and to promote the wellbeing of individuals by focusing on their subjective experience as it unfolds in their interaction with physical, social, cultural and spiritual dimensions in living.”
British Psychological Society, 2015
