Brendan Barnes

Online and Face-to-Face Sessions

It is my experience and belief that counselling works. But why consider counselling? When I talk to people, sometimes they bring a particular issue…………but sometimes it is just a sense that things aren’t right. Both the specific and the general are valid start points for counselling. 

I offer online counselling and face-to-face counselling in Central London (Farringdon/Barbican area). I am available for short-term counselling of 6-12 sessions and longer-term work. The duration of therapy is open-ended but with regular check-ins to ensure that the work remains relevant to your needs.

I see counselling as a collaboration. My role is to support you in looking at the issues that brought you to counselling. There are no “pre-packed solutions”. We all have our own story and our own ways of finding a way forward. I aim to help people find their own answers. 

Through dialogue, we have the possibility to explore your values, beliefs, choices, and assumptions and how you see yourself and how you relate to others. These things shape us and the freedom we have to build our own lives. In the recent past, I have worked with anxiety, stress, depression, anger, and feelings of loss of meaning and direction. Considering alternative perspectives and exploring our behaviours and experiences with another person allows us to reconnect with who we really are and create the conditions for growth. 

I am committed to providing a safe, supportive, and non-judgmental environment for these conversations. I believe that counselling works best when there is sufficient trust between the counsellor and the client to allow the counsellor to question, explore and challenge the client’s way of being. That can be uncomfortable but it is by questioning what we think we know about ourselves that insight emerges. I recognize that, alongside space for reflection, sometimes what my clients need is very practical support, guidance and education. If that is what I bring to the process, it is also less than half the story. The work is also about you, your commitment is essential to making change happen and the two of us together finding what you need. 

In terms of training, I’m an integrative counsellor. An integrative approach means that resources from different areas of psychotherapy can be drawn on depending on your needs. This can be helpful given the different backgrounds and preferred ways of working that people bring to counselling. Within the wide range of psychotherapies that exist, my own approach is based on the humanistic tradition, with a strong influence from existential and attachment theory. In my post-qualification training, I have focused on better understanding the impact of trauma. 

Please refer to the Further Information Section for more information about my work.

my standard rate is £60 per session but I am open to provide concessions where affordability is an issue

Psychotherapeutic Counselling is a talking therapy, intended to help people bring about change and enhance wellbeing. It involves regular (usually weekly) sessions of 50 minutes and can be used to help people with a range of emotional and psychological problems of varying degrees of severity. These include depression, anger, anxiety, stress, negative thoughts, and low self-esteem. Practitioners are bound by an ethical framework and all work is confidential. The duration of therapy may be left open-ended or there may be a defined time limit. Both duration and goals are agreed at the outset as part of the contracting process between therapist and client. I offer counselling online and face-to-face or a mixture of the two. I discuss and agree the format of our sessions together with my clients. For face-to-face work, I am based in Central London, in the Farringdon/Barbican area. For online sessions, I use Zoom, with Facetime and Whatsapp as fallbacks in case of technical problems. In between sessions I can be contacted at brendan.barnes@missingelephant.com or on 07876214620 for text messages. 

My approach is based on my integrative training, which means that I draw on resources from different schools of psychotherapy. This can be helpful given the different backgrounds and preferred ways of working that clients bring to counselling. I seek to be genuine, supportive and authentic in my relationships with clients. Within the wide range of psychotherapies that exist, my own approach is based on the humanistic tradition, with a strong influence from existential and attachment theory. In my post-qualification training, I have focused on better understanding the impact of trauma. 

·         Humanistic approaches to counselling emphasise the quality of the relationship between counsellor and client and are underpinned by a belief in the human desire to grow and self-heal.

·         Existentialism focuses on the meaning that we attach to our lives and our responsibility to make the right choices in order to live meaningful lives in the face of anxiety and uncertainty.

·         Attachment theory sees our way of being in the world (sometimes called an internal working model”) as having its roots in experiences in early life.

·         Trauma was previously thought about mainly in relation to extreme events, but is now seen as both more complex (and common) 

In terms of background, I studied Psychology at University (1977-80). Following graduation, I worked in the private sector initially in London and, for the last 20 years, in Brussels. In 2016, following a reflection on the values that had guided my career to that point, I commenced training as an Integrative Counsellor with the Minster Centre. I have been working with clients since 2019. Recent work with clients has addressed anxiety, panic, trauma, anger, depression, and loss of meaning.

My previous career has been useful to me as a counsellor, not least in working with different cultures and values, but working as a counsellor entails a quite different way of looking at life. Perhaps the most important difference is to allow space for exploration of personal conflicts and to acknowledge respectfully the uncertainty that many of us confront every day. Life can be difficult, but always contains the possibility of growth and change.