Linda Henderson

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Blackheath Counselling Service
Available for new clients
Available for new clients

This professional is available for new clients.

London, SE3 7PF
Available for new clients
Available for new clients

This professional is available for new clients.

About me

I'm an experienced Integrative psychotherapist and counsellor. I am aware how difficult it is to reach out and ask for help and therefore I feel privileged when a client can do that and we can engage in a confidential session in the warmth and comfort in a home setting.  I work in depth psychology and integrate other modalities.  I work empathically with depression, childhood trauma, ADHD.  I always offer concessions to meet each client's needs.

Blackheath Counselling Service is the service I provide as Linda Henderson. I am available 5 days a week 10am-9pm.  If desired I can provide online and telephone counselling. 

I use a variety of approaches which include Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), Psychodynamic, Psychoanalysis, Person-Centred and Gestalt. 

The first session is for you to assess how you feel about the counselling process. You are not obliged to commit yourself to any session other than the one you have booked. When reaching out for help please remember no problem is too big or too small!.  Please call or send an email if you have any questions, or would like to book a session.

Some of the areas of therapy I work with:

Trauma Resulting from Childhood

Feelings of abandonment by the mother can bring low self-worth and self-hatred. We can cover this feeling of not being loved with addiction, the pain of aloneness is unmanageable for an infant, so often we fill this feeling of abandonment with addictions. This needn't be obvious harmful addictions like drink, substances, and smoking it can well be we are addicted to work, to a chronic exercise programme - anything can be an addiction to fill the pain. Feeling unloved the next best thing is to feel needed. Our life is then driven by the need to be needed by our parents, our family, our peer group our work colleagues. We adapt ourselves to such an extent to belong, we no longer are authentic, we now don't know who we are having lost touch with our gut instincts and our real feelings and emotions. Our feelings are initially suppressed and then we repress our emotional and feeling body. Exploring this emotional dissociation and connecting to your Authenticity can be wonderfully liberating. You may find you make new friends, and/or deepen the relationships with your family, colleagues and friendship circle. Life becomes fuller, more creative and enjoyable.

Depression

When we suppress our life force, we depress it, we don't allow it to surface to consciousness. The result is we feel depressed. This suppression can sometimes be because we say we don't like who we are, we therefore don't feel we can share who we are with others. Self hatred is not uncommon and has its roots in childhood either through being neglected, rejected, abused etc. Therapy can help you discover, uncover and love and live that locked down energy that is you.

  • ADHD
  • bereavement
  • stress
  • social anxiety
  • relationship problems
  • addiction
  • low self-esteem
  • self-harm
  • phobias
  • psycho-physical disorders
  • couple counselling

My Approach:

CBT, Psychodynamic, Psychoanalysis, Depth Psychology, Person-Centred, Gestalt, Childhood Trauma

I can use different models for different clients. CBT is one of the most popular models used by the NHS that many clients want to work with. It can help in changing negative behavioural patterns into positive behaviours.  With gentle and sensitive exploration the obstacles and fears around change are brought to consciousness.  Creating a relationship of empathy and trust the client can feel confident to share their fears and concerns with me.

Dealing with Unfinished Business - Needing Closure

Gestalt techniques I have found very helpful, especially in dealing with bereavement and unsatisfactory endings in relationships. Writing a letter to the other, even if the other is not alive, can help complete and close a cycle which is painful allowing a new life cycle to begin. 

Healing Our Whole Self - A Holistic Approach to Counselling

As a holistic practitioner, I am aware of the need to help align and balance the whole person, body, mind and spirit.  Listening deeply to my client's concerns within the context of their story helps re-align and focus my client in their journey towards living their reality.

Exploring our childhood patterns - returning to the root of our sense of self

In building a foundation for the counselling relationship, I create a bedrock of trust, empathy and respect for my client to enable them to return to their childhood.  It is often a painful process but an illuminating one to return to where our conditioning started from - our parents. Creating a safe and non-judgmental container for my clients allows them to be vulnerable and disclose what may be sensitive and painful experiences from the past.  Showing respect and empathy for my client can gradually help them make that journey and slowly dismantle the story they have built like a wall around themselves to protect them from knowing their true self and living those true selves in the world.

Healing our Inner Child

Returning to childhood is an important step in the resolving and healing process. It is not unusual for my client to emerge from this exploration with fresh insights and an understanding not just of how they lost touch with their true nature in their childhood but finding they can bring with them from the inheritance of their past, a sense of self, values and beliefs they thought they had lost.

The present can be filled with a sense of their real nature.  Past inherited negative and self-destructive thinking patterns can be dismantled and a rekindling of compassion and kindness towards oneself and others can develop.

Going Deeper into our wounds and the mystery of our being - Depth Psychology 

Those clients that bring long-standing deep issues require exploration in psychological depth. Here Depth Psychology in a particular way can help unravel the complex web of emotional and psychological patterns and conflicts that originated from our family background.  To become who we truly are - to emerge from our family background and find ourselves is what Carl Jung called 'the path of individuation'.

Becoming an individual - Discovering our true Self

To live as an individual freely expressing yourself from your own locus of integrity and evaluation is how most of us want to live.  The role of the psychotherapist is to help you begin that journey to 'individuation'.  Questioning and challenging our values, beliefs and prejudices is a necessary process towards 'individuation'. What are our ideals, philosophy, principles, values, beliefs and prejudices? What do we truly think and feel about ourselves, others and life?  What belongs to us and expresses our true nature and what have we inherited? Men and women both have different challenges to meet to become themselves. Rather like the mythic trials of the hero and heroine life will at some time confront us with the struggles we need to become an individual, to extricate ourselves from what Jung called the 'Collective Unconscious' - the unthinking mass.  We are here I believe to be our unique Self - to contribute our own original perspective to society.

ADHD

We currently live in a world of mass distractions. To focus our attention for more than 5 minutes can be difficult. Our childhood can hold the emotional memory of patterns of behaviour that deflect our attention continuously. A conflicted childhood can interfere with our natural neurophysical and psychological growth. Counselling can offer a path towards healing some of the negative mindsets, e.g. low self-esteem that has been engendered by our childhood.  Giving just a few minutes at the end of the counselling session to close your eyes, sitting in quietness, listening to the breath and stilling the mind can be helpful in bringing clarity of mind and a feeling of peace. 

What can obstruct us from being ourselves - the 'shadow' 

Carl Jung often called the unconscious our 'shadow'.  He saw the shadow as that which is unknown to us, unconscious and where nearly all our potentiality lies. He said that 75% of our psyche is in the shadow and we don't live it out because of 'what will their neighbours say!' It sounds incredible but more often or not it is true.

Because we don't know what is in our shadow we project it onto others. Often it is unseen negative qualities we don't like about ourselves.  Taking back these projections is perhaps one of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of therapy. As friendships can then be repaired, renewed and matured.

Not all our shadow is negative there are also many positive traits which you may have yet to discover - that friend or other you envy who possesses a wonderful quality that you already have but don't know. When you can take back your shadow projections and own them, a big transformation takes place.  Together with the counsellor, this work is possible, slowly and sensitively.  The difficult partner becomes not so difficult and the boss at work is no longer a tyrant. Finding a compassionate and forgiving attitude towards yourself softens the ego and draws those estranged friends and loved ones closer to a more mature trusting and loving relationship. 

Living your Story

When you take back your shadow projections you begin to live your story.  When you are not trying to meet another's needs, but listening to your own, you are living your story. I hope I can help my client discover what Jung called the hidden story that crashed you upon the rocks. To live in a place that is Real within you is liberating. You can live looking out from your eyes rather than the eyes of the past hurt child.  Relationships become more honest and as a consequence wounds are healed.  The honesty, trust and respect fostered in the therapeutic relationship can help form the blueprint for other relationships.  By learning a deeper listening we can relate to and respect our partners in rebuilding difficult relationships.

Using Creativity for Deeper Exploration

I encourage insight into my client's inner life, the hidden life, through different creative mediums.  If you wish to explore within the context of your life, drawing, writing, poetry, dance or play or just start keeping a dream journal then this will be supported by me.  There are many ways in which you can connect to your instinctual nature and its inherent gifts and feel more fully alive. Playing spontaneously, allowing humour and poetry to come into your everyday life brings a new energy that creates a lightness and a more simple way of being.

Another way of exploring creativity

Dreams. images and metaphors are often helpful in finding a language to dip deeper into the creative imagination. Not all clients dream, but invariably when a client is asked do you dream and the response is no, the following week - lo and behold a dream appears. The dream gives access to a deeper strata of the unconscious psyche and is helpful in connecting us back to our story. A dream journal is helpful in recording dreams.

The imaginal world - as that of a child - can be a wonderful place to discover your gifts. Together we can explore the field of your perhaps untapped imagination what has been left and forgotten there waiting for you to claim and live it.

Remember that no problem is too small or too big that it cannot be shared.  We are not uniquely alone or separate in our problems, every living being has at some time experienced the same problem - as to whether it is resolved depends on whether we can share it with another who is willing to listen.

My therapeutic aim above all is to help you live out who you truly are.

Training, qualifications & experience

Linda Henderson is an experienced, qualified and accredited member of the BACP and Members of the Association for Pastoral and Spiritual Care and Counselling.

  • Diploma in Counselling (Humanistic CSCT)
  • Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling (Humanistic AQA)
  • Members of the Society of Teachers for the Alexander Technique (MSTAT)

Trained as an Integrative psychotherapist/counsellor I work sensitively with a variety of models to suit my clients. I provide a comfortable safe and confidential space for my clients. I work with different models to suit my clients.

My training spans over a period of 20 years. I have had counselling experience in the NHS as well as many years in private practice.

Qualified in Humanistic therapy - Person-Centred - CBT - Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy - Gestalt - Transpersonal.

TRAINING COURSES:

  • Spiritual Care at RIGPA (Buddhist Foundation)
  • Bereavement Counselling (Eleanor Foundation)
  • Drug & Alcohol Abuse - Sex Abuse (Family Matters)
  • Couple Counselling - Stress Management (Alexander Technique)
  • Jungian Dreamwork (Jungian Dream Group)
  • Yoga and Meditation (Yoga and Meditation Teacher)

Member organisations

Registered / Accredited

Registered / Accredited

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
British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP)

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

British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy
Accredited Register Scheme

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.

British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy

Other areas of counselling I deal with

My client work also concerns working with highly sensitive people (HSP). Social anxiety is often experienced by people who would define themselves as HSP.

My approach is to reflect the importance of my client's feelings and values and the unique contribution they have to offer in all areas of life. Confidence can grow in deeply appreciating, respecting and expressing one's core values and beliefs: self-confidence and self-esteem are restored in difficult and tense situations, engendering an improved quality of relationship with oneself and the other.

Fees

Concessions offered for

  • Low income
  • Unemployed

Additional information

  • Individual Counselling - £50 for the 'therapeutic hour'
  • Couple Counselling - £60 for the 'therapeutic hour'
  • Supervision - £50 for the 'therapeutic hour'

The above fees are negotiable - so please don't hesitate to enquire, as I do offer a reduced fee to meet each client's needs.

When I work

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Night

For further information please do not hesitate to contact me. I am 5 mins. walk from Westcombe Park Station and local transport.

There is 2-hour free parking in the area.

91A Coleraine Road, Blackheath, London, SE3 7PF

Type of session

In person
Online
Phone

Types of client

Young people
Adults
Older adults
Couples
Linda Henderson
Linda Henderson