Chesterfield Counselling

About Psychotherapy and Counselling

Very few people go through life without needing help or support at some point. You may be having difficulty coping with your life right now, remembering painful events or repeating unhelpful patterns of behaviour, or you may want to undertake a course of personal development to get more out of your life. Counselling and therapy can provide you with a chance to explore these experiences and to make positive changes.

There are lots of reasons why you might want to start counselling and therapy. You may want to:

Improve your life and your future

Handle stress and anxiety better

Find ways of solving problems at work

Understand difficult feelings like depression or anger

Find new ways to be with your family, partner or other close relationships

Cope better with illness, or have experienced an accident or trauma

Improve self confidence

Resolve problems with eating and food

Get support because you have lost a partner or someone close to you


Individual psychotherapy and counselling can provide you with a place where you can take the time to understand these types of questions and explore your situation. The therapeutic relationship also provides you with an opportunity to explore aspects of yourself in a professional setting with a person who will not judge you and where you will be supported, respected and welcomed. I see part of my role to give feedback, to provide information, to share my thoughts and feelings where it might be useful and to provide a positive, safe space where you can learn whatever is needed for you to make the changes you want and achieve your goals.

Couples psychotherapy and counselling provides a place where you and your partner can explore how you communicate, problem solve and negotiate in your relationship. Sometimes it is helpful to explore the differences between you and how your individual histories and experience may be impacting on your life together. In working with a couple the focus of the therapy is on the relationship, what you as a couple want to change and how to achieve that.

Group psychotherapy and counselling provides an opportunity to explore aspects of yourself and your relationships in a group setting, where the dynamics of the relationships between the group members can provide immediate and live material for useful therapeutic work.


About Transactional Analysis

There are many different types of counselling and therapy, Transactional Analysis (TA) is a humanistic psychotherapy which means that it recognises the worth and value of each individual and their striving towards health and fulfilment. There are a number of other core concepts and ideas that are central to TA. Some of them are listed here:

TA holds that everyone has the ability to learn and change and that individuals are ultimately responsible for their own behaviour, thoughts and feelings. This idea is incredibly powerful as it offers great potential for us to make new decisions about our lives and carry out personal change.

In TA the personality has different aspects or parts called ego states. One of the ways people may experience emotional and psychological difficulties are when these parts are in conflict.

Contractual working is also cental to TA. This means that I will work with you to help you identify what your "wants" from counselling and therapy and these will be our aims and goals. Therapy and counselling is not viewed as something that is "done to" someone but as a mutual process of engagement where we are both fully involved. Part of this is that I will also share ideas about the therapy so that you can take an active part in the work we do together.

Transactional Analysis is a theory of personality, communication, relationships and child development; it looks at the ways we relate with ourselves and the ways we relate with others and offers new insights into these to help us understand ourselves better and so be more peaceful. It is able to use the many tools of psychotherapy ranging from psychodynamic to cognitive behavioural techniques.

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If you are willing to engage with the counselling and therapy process then it is possible to improve your situation by making new decisions, finding different ways to be that will bring about positive change.