Amanda Asserati MBACP Accred. UKRC & NRMSAC Reg. Approved Adoption Counsellor

I provide a highly professional, sensitive and confidential Counselling Service (GDRP Compliant).

I have over 20 years experience and I have had my BACP Accreditation since 2004.

During my Counselling career, I have worked for various organisations including Cruse Bereavement Care, Relate, Rape & Sexual Abuse Crisis, NHS Drug & Alcohol and Trauma Support. Currently I have a Private Practice, work for the NHS, Barnardo's and most well known Private Healthcare Insurance Providers (EAP's).

It is important that you feel comfortable working with me, otherwise you will not gain the most from your sessions. Therefore, when you contact me for the first time, I will offer you a Consultation, during which you will be able to ask me any questions you may have and I can assess how to best help you.

I will ask you to arrive at the allocated time and, if early, to wait in your car. This is so that I can maintain your confidentiality and that of others that I may be seeing before you.

We will meet in a private room on the side of my house, which I hope you will find a safe space for you to explore what is happening in your life.

At the end of the Consultation, I will ask you if you would like to continue Counselling. You will be under no obligation to book further sessions but, if you would like to do so, these will be for one hour and booked on a weekly/fortnightly basis (I can be flexible for those who work shifts). You are in charge of how many sessions you have and we will regularly assess your progress together, in order to ensure you are receiving the very best of help.

Within our counselling relationship, I will see you as a unique individual and I will endeavour not to form an opinion as to what kind of person you are or judge you in any way. My interest is in helping you understand yourself and explore how your life can be satisfying, by taking responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

If you change anything at all about yourself it will be because you want to, not because I think you ought to.

We will spend most of our time together talking, but it won't be like the conversations you are used to. You will be in charge of the 'agenda', and I will do my best to understand what you want to achieve and help you to do so. You may find that there are times when you don't really know what to say or you might want to think about something before you say the words. You might even feel like saying nothing for a while which is fine by me. I will be happy to wait until you want to talk.

I will try to understand how you are experiencing your world and what is happening to you. Consequently, I will often reflect back what I have understood you to be saying and how you might be feeling. You will then have an opportunity to check on how well I understood you.

My Approach

I use an Integrative Humanistic Approach, making use of Person-Centred, Transactional Analysis and Gestalt Models.

I have also integrated a Psychodynamic, Task Orientated and Cognitive Behavioural flavour to my work, which I find very useful.

My Approach provides me with the tools to offer my client(s) various ways of exploring their feelings and emotions. By looking at how they communicate with me, I can vary techniques according to the needs of my individual client(s), in order to avoid confusion/misunderstanding.

I have made a serious commitment to working with issues of difference and equality. Therefore, I regularly attend workshops focussing on these issues, along with other regular training courses to inform my practice and enable me to provide a safe and highly professional service.

As do all Counsellors, I have ongoing formal consultative support (Supervision) for my work in accordance with professional requirements. This is so that I can regularly monitor and review my work to maintain good practice. During these meetings I will only be discussing what my thoughts were in our sessions, therefore maintaining client confidentiality.

COUNSELLING HELPS LOTS OF PEOPLE, BUT UNFORTUNATELY THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES. I WILL BE THERE TO SUPPORT YOU, BUT YOU ARE THE ONE THAT WILL DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT YOU MAKE ANY CHANGES.