Counselling and psychotherapy to help you make sense of your world
SERVICES
What is Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy, sometimes referred to as Talking Therapy, largely involves talking about your particular issues or concerns with an experienced professional who can support and challenge you to think more effectively about who you are, how you are and what you need within a safe, confidential environment.
A psychotherapist will not tell you what to do but will instead will help you to draw on your own resources to find ways of living and being that feel right for you. When you become more aware of who you are and how you become stuck in negative behavioural, emotional and thinking patterns you are able to live more creatively, spontaneously and make better life choices.
When can psychotherapy help?
There is an enormous range of problems that psychotherapy can help with. Some people choose see a psychotherapist because they are in crisis while others may not know what is wrong but simply feel that life is not satisfying any more. Psychotherapy can be short term or long term depending on what your particular need is. Just some of the issues that psychotherapy can help with are:
- Depression
- Identity confusion
- Bereavement
- Relationship issues
- Abuse
- Stress
- Anxiety
- Emotional difficulties
- Personal development
- Panic attacks
- Low self esteem
- Intercultural challenges
- Feeling stuck or general unhappiness with life
- Building coping strategies
About Melissa Cliffe, BA (Hons), MA, UKCP Accredited
Melissa is a UKCP accredited Gestalt Psychotherapist and has many years experience through her varied private practice, her work as a bereavement counsellor at St Joseph’s Hospice, Hackney, as a workplace counsellor and working with troubled children in schools with the Place2be.
This has been complemented by her time as a professional personal development trainer, and facilitator of a support group with Hope Valley Counselling. Before training as a psychotherapist Melissa worked within the events and marketing industry and has a direct experience of the pressures and complexities of working in the commercial sector.
Melissa has an international background, having lived in Australia and the US before settling in the UK, and has carried out research into the experience of living an internationally mobile life. As well as her general psychotherapy practice she has an active interest in working with people who struggle with intercultural issues.
How does it work?
If you are interested in finding out more please call or email to arrange an initial assessment session. This gives you the opportunity to find out if you would like to work with Melissa. If you then decide to continue together you can explore whether something short term or long term might be appropriate.
A session lasts for 50 minutes and costs between £40 - £50 depending on circumstances and time of day. This includes the assessment session.
What is Gestalt Psychotherapy?
Here are a few of the basic premises of Gestalt Psychotherapy:
- You know yourself better than anybody and a therapist cannot presume to tell you how you feel and what to do. What we can help with is supporting and accepting you as a unique individual, validating what you feel and challenging you to think and act in new and more creative ways.
- Gestalt helps to free you from the unhelpful ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ that rule our lives so that you can more readily connect with what you really want.
- To understand a person they must be considered as a whole being – their thoughts, feelings and how they feel in their bodies. Many therapists only work with what we think and what we feel but we can learn so much more when we also pay attention to how we hold tensions in the body.
- The aim of therapy is not to foster a dependency on the therapist but to help you to be responsible for your own wellbeing, and find ways of drawing on your own resources and support network.
Links
UKCP – United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy
www.psychotherapy.or.uk
BACP – British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
Hope Valley Counselling
www.hopevalleycounselling.com
TCK World: The Official Home of Third Culture Kids
www.tckworld.com
Service Categories
Counselling, Psychotherapy
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