Anna-Maria Anderson
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This professional is available for new clients.
This professional is available for new clients.
About me
People come to counselling with me for support with all sorts of problems! Very often, clients are feeling anxious and overwhelmed. They may describe, on edge, struggling to focus, unable to relax, experiencing intrusive thoughts, and maybe even struggling with unpleasant and frightening physical symptoms. This can be emotionally draining and can result in difficulty sleeping and changes in eating habits. It can also result in unhealthy coping strategies, such as excessive alcohol consumption, use of illegal drugs, comfort eating or gambling.
I work with clients to help them feel more relaxed by encouraging the practice of relaxation techniques that calm both the mind and body. Alongside this, I use Transactional Analysis to explore the cognitive aspects of anxiety, with the aim of helping you understand the deeper thought patterns and emotional responses that may be keeping you stuck. Anxiety and stress can originate from many different starting points—workplace stress, difficulties at home, relationship challenges, social anxiety, and low self-esteem.
The first stage of counselling will be to help you to understand your anxiety as a stress response and to begin to manage this. I provide a compassionate and supportive space to help you regain control, feel more grounded, and experience improved emotional wellbeing. When we are feeling completely overwhelmed, it can make such a difference to have a safe space to talk things through openly with someone who wants to support you.
Often what is happening on the surface of our lives is quite often deeply linked to our pasts and in particular our childhoods and growing up. Transactional Analysis provides us with lots of great tools which can help us to understand and make sense of the ways in which we view ourselves and our place in the world. It can help us to make sense of why we might have certain struggles, or why uncomfortable or frustrating interactions with others or relationship patterns seem to repeat themselves, leaving us with an end result of feeling a familiar and unpleasant way.
I work exclusively online, which means you are able to access sessions from the comfort of your own home, or from somewhere private at work. If you travel for work frequently, it may also mean that you are able to continue counselling sessions during these times.
I have a young family and so I do not answer unscheduled calls, because clients deserve my undivided and uninterrupted attention, from the point of first contact. What I ask is that you contact me via Counselling Directory, email, or my website. We can then arrange an initial telephone call, free of charge to talk about what you would like to get out of counselling, or we can correspond over email to see if we would be a good fit to work together, if this suits you better than a call.
If you are able to provide some information in your initial email about what has led you to think about having counselling then this would be helpful. I do advise all clients who contact me that there are unfortunately a couple of areas I have chosen not to work with, as I feel these require specialist training. These are adoption, food limiting eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia and porn addiction. Also, although I am able to help people understand and work on the dynamics in their relationships, I provide therapy to individuals only and am unable to work with couples.
Training, qualifications & experience
I am a fully qualified and insured counsellor, holding a Foundation Degree (Distinction) in Transactional Analysis in Humanistic Counselling (Level 5).
I hold a Level 4 qualification in Suicide Prevention, a Certificate in Online and Telephone Counselling, and a TQUK Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Autism. I also hold Level 2 and 3 qualifications in Counselling Skills and Transactional Analysis 101 and regularly undertake CPD in many different areas.
I have in the past provided counselling through an organisation to support victims of sexual and domestic abuse and can provide a safe way of working with underlying trauma. I have worked for another organisation providing support to problem gamblers and affected others and have a first-hand experience and understanding of the impact of addiction, along with knowledge in the neurobiology of substance misuse, which puts me in a good position to support clients who are struggling in this area, or their relatives.
Member organisations
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
Therapies offered
Photos & videos
Fees
£45.00 per session
Concessions offered for
When I work
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I work Tuesday and Thursday mornings and Mondays and Wednesdays until mid-afternoon.
I currently have availability to take on clients.
I am unable to hold evening/weekend sessions.
Further information
Initially, I will ask you to provide me with some insight of what has led you to seek counselling. If you can provide some information on your initial email, this would be helpful. It may also be helpful to have a chat via Zoom.
During our first session, I will complete an assessment with you. This will help me to get to know you better and provide me with important information to aid our work together.
I see clients Monday to Thursday and currently have limited availability.
From September 2023 I will be available Wednesday mornings to see clients.
