Annika Giles

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You might be wondering if counselling can support you whatever challenging period in life you are going through at the moment. I know it takes courage to make the first contact, but I am here to support you. 

Counselling can support you to find clarity in some areas in your life. It can help you to work through complex, difficult emotions you may have after traumatic experiences in life.  Counselling can help you to challenge negative thinking patterns, and give you new tools to cope with difficult situations. 

I offer 20-30minute free phone call for you to find out what is counselling and if it could help you.  You can learn about me as a counsellor and if you feel you can talk openly and honestly with me.  
Counselling relationship is very important part of counselling process.  You need to feel heard and valued as you are. 

I am passionate about supporting you to find a way how to feel better again.  I believe and I have experienced it myself too, that every one of us has capacity to change and find a way,  with right support, to feel better again. 
Some of the issues which I feel can be helped at counselling by talking them through are :

• General anxious or depressed feelings, social anxiety which you find difficult to cope with and do not know how to start feeling "you" again.
• Coping with variety of relationship issues either family relationships and relationships at work. 
• Bereavement and loss. Overwhelming sadness when you have lost a loved one, a pet, a job or anything else in your life. 
• Stress which has become increasingly difficult to cope with either relating to personal or work life. 
• Low self-esteem and self confidence, feelings of not being good enough, feeling sad all the time. When you feel really low, finding way out of the low mood can feel hard. 
• Struggling to cope with chronic illness. And how daily life, your hopes and dreams have had to change. You might be finding hard to cope with constant pain and worry about future. 
• Trauma either historical or something which has happened recently. The way it has stayed with you, and how it is affecting your life still at many levels. 

These are some of the issues which I have experience on counselling both women and men.

Counselling may not take those issues away, but it can give you ways of coping with them a lot better. It can allow you to move forward again with your life. 

What is counselling

In case you have not had counselling before, just a couple words to explain what counselling is. I still remember how daunting it was to make the first contact with my first counsellor.  I did not know what to expect or what was expected from me. 

Person-centred way of counselling is for me as a counsellor to listen when you are ready to talk. There is no agenda, there is no need for you to share anything what you are not ready to share with me. It can take time to build the trusting relationship, and sometimes you may find that I am not the right counsellor for you. It is okay!

You choose what you want to talk about and what you would like to achieve by having counselling sessions. My role is to support you with this and we will review the progress together.  

As an integrative counsellor, my counselling approach is adapted according to the needs of you as a client.  This might include using CBT, ACT and creative arts as part of counselling process.

Can counselling help?

I know by experience that having the right support can really make you feel better and help you to cope with different life experiences on your own again. 

It can even be that you do not really know at the moment how you really feel, or how to express your feelings and emotions. 

My role as a counsellor is to offer you a safe, confidential and trusting therapeutic relationship which supports you to explore either issues from the past or present.  

I believe that we all need someone whom we can share confidentially how it really feels for us, without any judgements. Someone who listens us attentively.

Walk and talk therapy

Not only do I believe the healing powers of nature, but I also think that walk and talk therapy may suit better for those who are not keen on "traditional" counselling set up. Therefore I will be offering talk and walk therapy after initial sessions in York/Beverley/Pocklington areas.