Mark Arram (MBACP)

Peckham London SE15
0207 0645 146 Click here to Email me

Profile

I am a counselor working in Peckham Rye/East Dulwich, which is easily accessible by buses 343 and 484 and by network railway, both from London Bridge and Victoria.

I am a gentle, active counselor offering a sensitive, personal space for you to explore in depth what you want to talk about. Together, we highlight and carefully unpick the knot of whatever is bothering you.
I like to focus on noticing and accepting the feelings and thoughts coming up that are making you unhappy without necessarily judging them : my initial aim is to stop you drowning in your negative feelings and thoughts.
This can be achieved sometimes more easily than one would think.
You may be in serious difficulty but ask yourself this: do you feel unhappy all the time or only when you are caught up in what is bothering you? Take a ' feeling temprature ' of yourself, from situation to situation. Great awareness can come from this.
My work shows me that clients with apparently the harshest past experiences and current insecurities can still nevertheless feel life positively. Problems come in waves. They are not permanent and because they come in waves problems can be dealt with more calmly than would first appear.

About me:
I am 48 and married with two sons, aged, at the time of writing this, 20 and 16. I was born in London and have lived in various parts of the city all my life, having recently bought a home in south east London.
I was drawn to counseling from my own complicated family that I grew up in. When I was about 16 I understood my family was not the family that I felt it to be and the family I was expected to see.
My late teenage years and twenties were spent discovering what my family meant to me. Discoveries that I understand now as a set of screwed up family relationships that I had to deal with(!)

I define the counseling I do now as an attempt to help you live your life as best as you can, through conversation with contemplation, so that together we can help clear up what is bugging you.
The counseling I offer is for clients who want a sensitive way of dealing with negative experiences. The counselling is also for clients who want to understand their feelings and thoughts better.
The relief this brings I also relate to myself and my own complicated upbringing that was full of tension and family politics with no time or space for gentle contemplation or togetherness.
These two positive qualities are very necessary for good counseling and a good life.

More about me:
Music was my first sanctuary away from my insecure upbringing. Music was the place I discovered a different world to the home I grew up in. I learned about different cultures and the sounds of jazz, world music, classical music and met new people, all different kinds of musicians with their own eccentricities.

If I can be excused for making the following pun, counseling has become another string to my bow and to follow the music analogy painfully one more time, I have come to see the connection between two musicians playing well together and a good counseling relationship.
It only needs the right series of notes played or the right set of words said to make a difference, creating understanding, comradeship...
Getting it wrong can also be insightful. A dose of frustration may test limits and set off a period of fresh thinking.
For example, a client recently felt very frustrated with me for not understanding him properly. He realized that his initial reaction to this frustration was to walk away from counseling but he then began to understand that this mirrored his habitual reactions to relationships in general. He continued his counseling and was happier from doing so.
I have good qualities to give you in the work we will do together: an empathy for unhappiness and loneliness; a deep curiosity for language and what our speech says about us, and an understanding that change occurs from a certain kind of being together as much as any particular applied technique or strategy.
My music and counseling work mirror each other. I am often called on to inspire my fellow musicians and have found this to be happening in counseling.
I have been told by clients that among other things I bring both peace and order and that I am " right on the button," and offer " accurate interpretation..."
I do help, although of course counseling is a two way street...
This is the Me of me: my developing self. My aim for each client I see is to gently try and bring out the You of you, your developing self.

Training, Qualifications & Experience

My first degree was in Sociology ( Hons ) at the University of London.
I further trained as a counselor at Goldsmiths College ( Post Grad. Diploma). I have full membership with the BACP. I also hold a current CRB check.
I am also interested in meditation, both for me - it is something I am finally doing every day, after decades of wanting to but not quite having the courage and application to do so - and as a counseling tool.
For example, meditation is useful in locating where we are holding tension in our bodies. Recently, a client was astounded to find out just how much tension she was holding in her jaw. In this instance, it was stress caused by exam finals and the feelings of change from leaving university.
Meditation is also a very good way of giving yourself well being, an inner feeling of richness that was not there before. For me, this is an on going exploration that I am happy to share with interested clients.

My experience is wide and varied, from working with children in schools to adult individuals and couples in private practice.
I have also worked with adolescents in a specialist center for ad/hd and autism, providing with other staff, a personal and creative daily curriculum based on the arts. It was a profound working environment, both exciting and emotionally demanding and showed the way forward in delivering an education based on the needs of the child with autism or ad/hd rather than the needs of the system.
I have a truly multi cultural practice, with clients from South America, Eastern Europe, West Africa, North Africa...
Understanding English society can be complex. Client responses vary from feeling better here, in some obvious material ways, to feeling at home in their settled community but no where else. There can also be some generational conflict within the family, where traditional culture clashes with the new. And there is the constant struggle with getting settled here.
A fourteen year old girl, originally from Nigeria, recently complained to me that when she and her family went on holiday to Devon, a beautiful part of England, "everyone just stared!"
She said she preferred to stay in Peckham and I couldn't really blame her for wanting to do so.
This experience is not uncommon and in my counseling I am very interested in listening to different cultural and class experiences of England.
Sometimes, to gently paraphrase Linton Kwesi Johnson, England may suck! Equally, of course, any culture may suck if there is internal unhappiness and abuse within a family of such a culture.
But generally, if we can be together without anxiety and fear, as good neighbors so to speak, then we are already on an interesting path to understanding any troubling cultural and personal issues. Perhaps their negative importance will disappear altogether.

Areas of counselling I deal with

Other areas of counselling I deal with

Stammering:
Working with adults who stammer, I am understanding that speaking confidently has to do with feeling comfortable with yourself and in your body. This is developed from an experiential based counseling relationship, one to do with connecting speech to the body, and not much to do with any particular technique that although may work in the short time can quickly be forgotten and even incorporated in your stammer.

Fees

I operate a sliding scale that is dependent on income.

For a working client the fee is £40 for a 50 to 55 minute
appointment.

For couples seeking relationship counseling, the fee is £70.

I also specialize in counseling people who are on low incomes, or signing on, maternity leave, students etc who cannot afford as much as this.

There is also a cancellation fee that is discretionary, depending on circumstances.

Further Information

Clients come and see me at my home. I have a comfortable office/sitting room to work in.

Online, email or telephone counselling available

Member Organisation(s)

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