Fees & FAQs
How much do sessions cost?
My standard session rate is £60. I have a small number of reduced cost spaces for those on a low income. I am also a registered provider with AXA Health, Aviva, Vitality, Allianz and WPA.
How often will we meet?
I work with weekly 50-minute sessions, usually at the same time every week. Sometimes I get asked for fortnightly sessions. As much as I empathise with the practical reasons behind this, such as time and money, my experience is that if you are serious about wanting things in your life to change, weekly sessions will serve you better. In my experience, it will be hard to keep up the momentum with twice-monthly meetings, and either party’s holidays or absences can create huge gaps in the work, which can end up frustrating for both sides. I want therapy to work for you and therefore I would ask for a weekly commitment because our chances for success are much higher that way.
Are psychotherapy and counselling the same thing?
These terms are often used interchangeably and also known under the umbrella term of ‘talking therapy.’
Counselling is sometimes understood to be shorter term and more issue-specific. You might be generally quite happy with how things are going and might encounter a set-back, such as a job loss, a bereavement, or another major life change. By talking things through with a counsellor or a therapist can help you process the experience, understand its impact, as well as decide how to respond to what has happened.
Psychotherapy is generally a longer process, which can bring about profound inner changes. Psychotherapists go through a long training (and personal therapy) in order to work in depth with clients and to facilitate these powerful inner shifts. Psychotherapy may be appropriate if you notice that you find yourself in a similar situation over and over again – i.e. you’ve changed jobs but a similar issue crops up; or you find yourself in repeating patterns in relationships. For example, you discover that even after finding a new partner, you are soon somehow back in a similar role you were in your previous relationship. Or perhaps you have come to realise that despite having attained many of your desired goals in life, there is an underlying sense of doom or a deep unhappiness, which you struggle to understand. In cases like these, psychotherapy can help to start to illuminate underlying (unconscious) patterns, deeply-held core beliefs (also called ‘organising principles’ or ‘schemas’). This process will usually bring about more clarity and understanding, and consequently, more choice in how to respond to life situations.
It is worth noting that these are general ideas and there are many counsellors who work long term. All trained counsellors and psychotherapists are required to have ongoing continuing professional development (CPD) and supervision throughout their careers. When choosing a therapist, in my opinion, a personal ‘fit’ is as important as the modality of their training or their work experience in years.
How long is therapy?
I work both short term and long term, usually in an open-ended way, (i.e. not with a set number of sessions) checking in regularly regarding how we are doing. Equally, we can agree to a number of sessions to start with, say 6 or 12, so that we have a clear review point, if that’s your preference. More often than not, my clients tend to stay longer than they thought, and the issues that we started with might lead us in surprising new directions. Deep change takes time – not least because usually building a good working alliance takes time. However, in my experience some very good work can be done in a shorter timeline, such as 4-6 months.
How do I know psychotherapy is for me?
Sometimes we don’t know. These days there is a huge variety of ways out there to help ourselves and explore what works in terms of our wellbeing. There are apps geared towards improving mental health, self-help books, peer groups, fitness and meditation classes, nature-based activities and many kinds of therapies to choose from. Psychotherapy works on several different levels, including the unconscious and the body. Why does that matter? Einstein is quoted to have said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” One could argue that a deep shift calls for something different from the thinking (or knowing) that we have used over the years. Books and talks can give us ‘information’ on a conscious level but in many cases, it doesn’t seem to be enough to bring about meaningful change. We still find ourselves in the same old patterns, the nuggets of gold lost and forgotten. In my experience, this can leave us feeling even more defeated and down, believing that we are broken beyond repair. Insights in psychotherapy sessions in the presence of a caring, attentive other often make themselves known as ‘full-body’ realisations. More importantly, they are generally not nuggets of wisdom from me, but have come directly to you in the process of our work. They are genuinely yours, and therefore more powerful than other people’s teachings. In psychotherapy terms, they are helpful realisations you cannot ‘un-know'; they leave a lasting imprint.
Like many other processes, sometimes psychotherapy asks for a leap of faith, a little bit of time to be tried and tested.
The Healing Elements of Psychotherapeutic Change
Psychotherapy and counselling are sometimes viewed with suspicion as ‘just’ talking. Those who are very practical or intellectual in nature - or those who grew up in a family culture of silence around emotions - might dismiss talking therapy before they even give it a go. Yet for most of us, meaning-making is important, and whether we realise it or not, we rely on dated narratives which were formed a long time ago.
In the way I work, a number of strands or approaches can come in, depending on a particular client:
- Exploration of what causes the current suffering – in addition to the problems that are in plain sight (i.e. "I feel underappreciated at work") this might include exploration of childhood events and deeply held core beliefs. These core beliefs are often held unconsciously, yet can be accessed in a skilled kind of conversation that psychotherapy is.
- Research shows that ‘witnessing,’ even if retrospectively (i.e. your therapist becomes a witness to something that happened to you a long time ago) can have a powerful healing effect. In combination with the therapist offering a different perspective or highlighting different aspects of the ‘story,’ witnessing can be impactful and transformative. Daniel Stern, a distinguished author in developmental psychology, speaks about the importance of a ‘narrative’ that gets created and even co-authored (by client and therapist together) in the process of therapy. Some of our narratives about who we are or what happened got set a long time ago and it can be liberating to realise that we have the power to literally re-tell our story.
- Difficult, unbearable emotions can gradually be experienced in the presence of a caring, attentive Other (the therapist). This may not be relevant to everyone, but is one of the key moments of change in psychotherapy. Wilfred Bion, an eminent psychoanalyst and researcher, speaks about the importance of ‘containing’ – the therapist will be there, very much affected by what you are saying and feeling, yet not overwhelmed by it – she/ he is able to ‘contain’ the difficult emotion. Research shows that being regularly held by this kind of emotionally sensitive but at the same time robust Other (the therapist) in time also helps the client to start to do the same for himself/ herself. And once we stop avoiding unbearable or difficult emotions and allow ourselves to feel them – they lose their power. The idea of ‘containing’ is pertinent in the field of child development – the theory holds that it is the parent who helps their baby and toddler regulate their emotions from day one. In psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic research it is suggested that we are therefore already primed to be positively affected by the Other (parent or therapist): when the right conditions are met, healing can begin.
- In the psychotherapy literature (P. Casement 2014) it has been suggested that most clients arrive in therapy with a (more or less unconscious) hope that their needs could be met and that they could be truly seen. Simultaneously, many clients exist in a state of (a mostly unconscious) fear of retraumatisation. (Here we are talking about relational trauma.) Skilled psychotherapists are aware that to move forward in this landscape of hope and fear, one must be willing to take small risks. I often talk about the psychotherapy space as one where we can gradually try out new ways of being and relating.
As a result of the above, the following usually happens:
- New core beliefs emerge. This is usually a very organic process, sometimes seen more clearly in hindsight, i.e. at a review point in therapy.
- As we feel validated, seen and heard without judgement, usually our sense of guilt and shame is significantly diminished. Our perspective broadens. There may be clear realisations, often felt in your whole being, not just intellectually, such as “It didn’t start with me,” “I am not faulty or broken,” "I have been doing X (perhaps a self-destructive or insensitive action) just to seek some happiness, which is a normal state for anyone to seek," etc. This in turn starts freeing up psychological bandwidth or energy to begin to make choices that are truly yours, coming from within. This is often a phase where self-help resources can be put into good use. Clients describe starting to value themselves, be kinder to themselves, starting to look after themselves more. Sometimes clients just describe feeling “more courageous,” “more settled,” “I’m aware the negative voice is still there somewhere but it’s lost its power,” etc.
- I have seen time and time again how a better relationship with ourselves leads to better relationships out in the world – with partners, children, friends, our own parents, colleagues, etc.
Please get in touch with any queries or to book a session.
