I am a trained counsellor with over twenty years experience delivering counselling in private practice, the NHS and the voluntary sector. I also ran a counselling charity for nine years where I oversaw the counselling delivery of over 60 counsellors.
I am senior accredited and registered with the BACP (The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy). The BACP Register was the first psychological therapists’ register to be accredited under the Professional Standards Authority’s accredited register programme, a government-backed scheme that aims to protect the public by helping them to choose health and care professionals who are competent and trustworthy. I adhere to the BACP’s Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions.
How can I help?
Any competent and well trained therapist should give you an experience of feeling understood and respected. That being said, different therapeutic schools have differing ways of understanding and describing what are universal human experiences.
I had an integrative training which means that I was taught a range of therapeutic models, but the one I draw upon most is psychodynamic therapy, with a Jungian orientation.
What does that offer you?
Psychodynamic therapy is one of the oldest established schools, now shaped by revision and new thinking, but rooted in Freud and Jung, who were amongst the earliest practitioners to speculate on what is subconscious and unconscious within us.
We’ve all at times been puzzled how we subvert our own conscious intentions and declarations – and repeatedly! We all know the profound influence relationships can have upon us, for good or for ill.
A psychodynamic counsellor will be listening to you at depth and reflecting with you about what might truly be shaping your behaviour, your relationships, your fears and your joys. This will involve looking at early life experiences, but a Jungian approach will include working with the imagery you bring from your imagination and dreams, reflecting on how such images can represent ways of living more fully, and, for some, serve as a guide to spiritual meaning.
My aim will be for you to leave counselling able to listen to yourself compassionately, with greater self-understanding and self-acceptance; to be receptive to what is yet to be discovered in yourself, and to recover a sense of hope.
Kathryn Mead 