Richard Mills
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This professional is available for new clients.
This professional is available for new clients.
About me
I have been offering counselling and psychotherapy to individuals for 20 years.
Top priority for me is whether you feel you can talk to me. I meet all sorts of people and I try to help everyone I see feel accepted enough to allow us together to explore whatever needs addressing.
Please feel free to call me first, or just send an email or text.
Training, qualifications & experience
Occasional My first degree is a BA in European Studies, for which I studied French, German, Politics and Economics at Loughborough University (1974 – 1978).
After university I did a one-year Postgraduate Diploma in International Marketing at North Staffordshire Polytechnic in Stoke.
I decided to take a completely different turn in my late 20’s and went to music school in Leeds: I attended Leeds College of Music (1986 – 1989) and took the 3-year degree course in Jazz and Contemporary Music. I had to deal with a life-changing shock during this period, which I won’t go into here. I eventually followed up this course with a one-year jazz course in Wakefield in 2000, and gained a diploma in jazz improvisation. The qualification is called Licentiate of the Guildhall School of Music and Dance. I still play jazz in my leisure time, when I am not doing counselling and psychotherapy.
When I got interested in counselling and therapy in my mid-30’s, I first did a 10-week introductory course(1992), followed by an RSA Certificate in Counselling Skills, at the Swarthmore Centre in Leeds (1992 – 1993).
I then trained at Park Lane College for 3 years and gained a Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling (1993 – 1996).
After that I did another year at Leeds Metropolitan University which converted my diploma into a BSc degree in Therapeutic Counselling (1997 – 1998).
I attained BACP (British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy) Accreditation in 1998.
In 1999 I gained a certificate in therapeutic groupwork from Group Analysis North, which was a one-year course (1998 – 1999).
In 2011 I successfully applied for status as Senior Accredited Counsellor/Psychotherapist with the BACP.
2014: Certificate in Couples Counselling with Leeds Psychotherapy Training Institute.
I am registered on the BACP Register of Counsellors and Psychotherapists, certificate number: 6161
Continuing Professional Development
Each year I do various activities that contribute to my continuing professional development. These include one-day seminars or lectures on a whole range of topics to do with therapy and life. I don’t want clutter this page with a long list of what I have done over the last 20 years, but I will mention a couple of highlights:
Two 12-week psychodrama groups in Bradford, with Aggi Jakubska
A one-day psychodrama course with David Brazier
Various seminars at the Harry Guntrip Trust in Leeds, with Ronald Britton, Patrick Casement, Adam Phillips, and many others.
The work I do in co-counselling – both the time I focus on myself and when I teach co-counselling to others – is very important for my ongoing personal development.
Occasional shamanic work, for another angle.
Member organisations
Being registered/accredited with a professional body means an individual must have achieved a substantial level of training and experience approved by their member organisation.
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred).
Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision.
Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training.
All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Other areas of counselling I deal with
I may be able to help you if you don't know what you need to address, but you know you want to talk to someone.
Therapies offered
Photos & videos
Fees
£85.00 per session
Free initial telephone or online session
Additional information
Fees and times
NB. See my money-back guarantee on my website.
Sessions for individuals and couples:
Regular weekly sessions last 50 minutes, and my fee for this is £85 per session in the daytime (until 6.00pm).
If your appointment starts at or after 6.00pm it costs £95.
The initial session lasts an hour and a half and costs £120.
When I work
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Monday, 9.00am - 9.00pm
Tuesday, 9.00am - 7.00pm
Wednesday, 9.00am - 7.00pm
Thursday, 9.00am - 6.00pm
Friday, 9.00am - 1.00pm
Further information
The phone rang…
I was once round at a friend’s house in Leeds when the phone rang. His girlfriend, Sally, picked up the receiver (it was 1988, hence ‘receiver’!), and it was one of her female friends: they proceeded to have a conversation during which they told each other how they were, how they were feeling about things. Sally sounded warm and relaxed, and there was plenty of room for the conversation to breathe. This might seem totally normal, but what struck me was how open they were with each other. I thought, ‘how come I don’t have conversations like that with my friends?
I had thought of myself as quite an open kind of person, but now I was beginning to wonder if I could make more satisfying relationships with people, and particularly with men. I realised I presented a certain persona of competence to the world, so if anyone asked ‘how are you?’ I would say fine, or not bad etc., but I wouldn’t really go into how I was. And I wasn’t really truthful with myself about my own emotional ups and downs.
The group…
I later joined a men’s group and found a bunch of people who were all for different reasons wanting to find out about themselves. We ran the group as a kind of self-help, DIY therapy group for a while, but, as is common for groups that focus on the self and relationships, we ran into some difficult conflicts and decided in the end to call in a therapist to help us sort through what was going on in the group. The group continued to have both difficulties and rich opportunities for personal growth, and I stayed in it for about 9 years in total.
‘Assert Yourself!’…
I also became interested in assertiveness training. In my 20’s I had thought of myself as a fairly confident person, but then I saw a TV programme on Channel 4, with Anne Dickson and Andrew Sachs, called ‘Assert yourself!’ It really made me think about how I would stop myself from putting my point across to people, or else how I might get into blaming the world for my problems, instead of taking responsibility for my development.
Taboo feelings…
The assertiveness training course that I subsequently did in Leeds focused on ways of behaving, and was very useful to me. But I started to wonder about what was going on underneath or behind my behaviour – why do I do what I do? What are the feelings that inform my choices? What about sadness, joy, disappointment, ambition, anger, jealousy, envy? And, how do my feelings and internal workings help me or hinder me when I have to deal with challenging issues like relationships, career change, family changes and health questions? Round about the same time, I got into co-counselling. You can read about that elsewhere on this site, if you’re interested. What I got most from co-counselling was a sense of freedom to be myself – I felt I had permission to explore inside myself without being disapproved of if I found something unpleasant.
The truth…
These things – the men’s group, assertiveness training, co-counselling – started to help me find out the truth about myself and be more in command of my own life. When I started to train professionally as a therapist I began seeing a therapist myself, first in individual therapy, and later in group therapy. I have worked with four or five different therapists over the years. See the stories in my blog that show how this impacted on me.
