What to expect

Seeking counselling is a courageous and positive step and can offer you support beyond that available from family or friends. It offers an environment in which you can freely express your feelings without judgement and gain deeper insights. Counselling sessions are also confidential, so you can talk about things you might not feel comfortable discussing with anyone else.

The aim is to help you find better ways to understand yourself  or to bring about changes to help you manage the way you think or behave to improve your mental and emotional well-being.

I provide counselling for individuals and couples on a short or long term basis.  This means you may either engage in counselling for as long as you require or choose to be allocated a set amount of solution focused sessions with specific goals in mind.

Our long term, open-ended service is BACP (British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy) accredited.

When you make contact with me, you can discuss the support you prefer or if you are unsure you can ask when you come in for your assessment.  I seek to ensure that everyone is seen within 2 weeks of the initial enquiry.

First Contact

Once you have made contact  with me,I will send you a client pack to complete and return.  This is for you to provide your personal details and reasons for seeking counselling.  As soon as I receive this information back I will invite you for a first appointment, known as an assessment session.  You can expect to wait between 1-2 weeks for this appointment.

Assessment Session

An assessment session lasts for around an hour.  During this time, I will ask certain questions about you and your life. This information helps to make an initial assessment of your circumstance.

Before attending your first counselling session  it may be helpful to prepare by writing down your reasons for seeking help.  This will make describing your feelings to a counsellor more comfortable. Your counsellor is not there to give you advice or tell you what to do.  Only you know how you feel in any given situation.

Identifying what you hope to gain from counselling helps to give your something to work towards in future sessions.

You will either both agree for counselling to continue, either on a short or longer term basis or decide that no further appointments are needed. This may be because you got what you wanted from the consultation, or because we both decided other ways of resolving your problem would be the best option.

Our first Session 

Sessions last for 50 minutes, and take place in a quiet room with just two of us present.  A number of things will be covered such as confidentiality and session timings.

I will ask you questions that will help me to understand your surface problem(s) before we can explore any deeper issues.

Some questions asked may include: – Why you sought therapy – Your personal history and current situation – Your family history

On-going Sessions

You may find these weekly sessions fly past once you start to open up. The type of counselling I offer iis one where the relationship between the client and counsellor is central to the counselling sessions and where a greater understanding of your concerns can be achieved.

How counselling has helped my clients:-

“​My counsellor has been brilliant  very calm and nurturing.  I’m  very grateful for the sessions which opened a completely new chapter for me.  Also, for the time I have had someone to talk to about everything has been absolutely invaluable to me as I have grown and have found that I am much stronger and free than I thought I could be”.

“The depression is gone and i feel better than I have for years”.

“ You have changed my life, thank you”.

“Made a huge difference to me and my family life, you saved our marriage”.

“I felt at ease to open up and talk about my personal feelings and negative issues, which was a miracle !!”.

“I have been encouraged to follow all the different parts in me, make sense of who I am and where I want to be heading towards with a Strong belief in myself”.

" Tolis is a wonderful therapist who helped me  understand my different parts and to synthesize them into something new. I  now feel  I can  lead MY life."