About Sarah

I qualified as a counsellor in 1999, completing my masters in counselling in 2006. I am a senior accredited counsellor and supervisor with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.  I successfully passed the OCST online counselling course in 2011 and am a fellow, member, and former chair, of the Association for Counselling and Therapy Online Therapy. 

I qualified in online counselling in 2011, and am a Fellow, and former Chair, of ACTO (The Association for Counselling and Therapy Online). I offer individual and couples therapy, both face to face and online; via email, instant messaging or webcam. Issues that I work with include stress and anxiety, low self-esteem, relationship difficulties, bereavement and loss, trauma and abuse, anger management, substance misuse.

My counselling is based on a Humanistic-Existential approach, which recognises that we all need to find our own meaning and path in life. I focus on helping you develop your self-awareness, to understand how you relate to yourself and the world around you.

I work flexibly with the needs of the individual client, integrating appropriately from other counselling approaches; including Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy.  I use my training in Internal Family Systems to support you in recognising, accepting and integrating all parts of yourself. 

I will work with you to identify your strengths, challenge unhelpful thinking cycles, connect to, and utilise, your inner resources to gain a deeper understanding of yourself and fresh perspectives.  We will work together to help you develop new coping strategies and move forward in a more positive direction.

I find the use of imagery and metaphors powerful in helping you understand your emotions, as by focusing solely on spoken or written words, the individual meaning and experience of that feeling can be more difficult to describe and understand.  Whereas a unique image can bring a tangibility and solidity to that emotion, helping you to find a new understand, and a different way to approach your difficulties.   

Each client is, of course, unique, and it is important that I acknowledge and work with the diversity within our counselling relationship, as I aim to create a safe, non-judgemental, trusting therapeutic space.  We will work collaboratively to help you express yourselves fully, and reflect on and explore your issues.

I will have a regular reviews with you, to enable you to reflect on the counselling process, and decide whether you have got everything you need from counselling, or whether you feel more sessions would help.

I also provide supervision, having supervised a mixture of student and qualified counsellors since 2003.

I provide sessions online or face to face from my home address in a room used exclusively for counselling, which I have tried to make as comfortable and relaxed an environment as possible.