How I work

The client is themselves capable of and responsible for achieving inner change and personal growth, with more of an emphasis on the present and the future than the past.. There is very restrained input from the counsellor who focuses largely on listening to the client.

These approaches hold that unconscious beliefs lie beneath unhelpful thoughts and behaviours. There is a focus on early developmental stages where these negative thoughts and behaviours might come from and an emphasis on finding healthier ways to challenge and manage previously repressed feelings. There is more direct input from the therapist than with traditional humanistic approaches.

These approaches hold that it is not the events that happen that cause upset or disturbance to people, but the way individuals think about these events which then produces feelings of upset and resultant negative behaviour patterns. There is a focus on showing people they can change negative patterns of both thinking and behaviour by changing the way they think, which changes emotive reactions into considered responses, and more appropriate and healthy behaviours. Again, there is more direct input from the therapist than with traditional humanistic approaches.

Transactional analysis relies on observing and analysing the three ego states (parent, child and adult) the client may use in their relationships and interactions with the world. The purpose of this is to guide the client towards using the adult ego state in their interactions with others, rather than the authoritarian approach of the parent ego state or the defensiveness of the child ego state.

Rather than trying to forcibly silence the intrusive negative thoughts which lead to emotional stress and distress, ACT helps the client learn to simply accept and observe, rather than engage, with such thoughts. By stepping back from the negative thoughts, their power is diminished, and the client can choose how to behave rather than be driven by these thoughts.

This approach helps to replace rigid and unforgiving negative thought patterns with a more flexible attitude, allowing the client to see that how they think about events, and their resultant behaviour, is more important than the events themselves.

This focuses on the present, being 'in the moment', rather than living in and being held hostage by the past or worrying about the future about things and events that might never happen. It allows the individual to observe experiences and feelings in a detached and non-judgemental way which can in turn help to manage unhelpful responses. Typically, mindfulness may include breathing and grounding exercises, visualisation, yoga and meditation.

This approach, which I adopt and am trained in, takes the view that different people can be helped by different counselling strategies or approaches at different times and that no single one of the afore-mentioned approaches (or others) has all the answers. This helps in tailoring the sessions to each individual client to address their needs as they see them and to promote flexibility in the therapeutic relationship.

Importantly, which approach or combination of approaches to use in the therapeutic sessions is agreed in collaboration with the client – there is a shared decision-making approach between therapist and client. I believe this further helps create relational depth in the therapy room.

The fundamental premise of the pluralistic approach in counselling is that each client is unique and will seek different things from therapy and need different approaches, suited to their own unique situation and presentation.