Claire Bloxsom UKCP Reg. MBACP Reg. PhD.

About me

I'm an Integrative Psychotherapist fully registered and accredited by the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). I am also an Integrative Psychodynamic Counsellor registered by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (Registered Member, BACP).

What to expect from Counselling and Psychotherapy:

Counselling and psychotherapy are similar in that they both aim to enhance your sense of wellbeing and to support you towards the life changes you are aiming for. We all experience problems in life, and sometimes it really helps to have space for you to explore your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Both counselling and psychotherapy involve working with an unbiased and qualified professional in a safe, predictable, and confidential environment, typically weekly, for an agreed period of time. The terms counselling and psychotherapy are often used interchangeably - the main difference between the two is that the emphasis with psychotherapy is usually on deeper and broader psychological work and is typically (but not always) aimed towards longer-term work.

Whilst counselling and psychotherapy can be a very effective process and can provide you with the opportunity for change, it isn’t always going to be easy because moving away from the familiar often feels uncomfortable. It’s important and necessary to feel challenged in order for growth and change to emerge. Commitment, transparency, and collaboration will be needed. You may want to work on one specific issue over a short period of time, or you may want to engage with longer term in-depth work. You may have a sense of how long you are looking to work for, but it's equally fine to not really know, and we can take things in stages. However, for whatever length of time we work with, we will regularly review the sessions and the work we are doing.

How I work:

I predominantly work face-to-face, occassionally online (using the Zoom platform). I work one-to-one and only with adults (18+).

The heart of my therapeutic approach is relational and appreciates our uniqueness as individuals and on your developing sense of ‘psychological integration’. This means that I would help you to consider ways in which you might experience a deeper sense of wholeness, connection, and comfort within yourself. I consider each therapy relationship to be different, and so I draw on a wide variety of theoretical approaches to help us reflect on how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviour may interact, converge, or diverge. For example, I appreciate the importance of the mind (thoughts), body (physiological experience), socio-political culture and oppression, how we make meaning in our life existentially, our ‘spiritual’ and/or creative selves, and how all these aspects can impact us in our everyday lives.

We all take in messages of some sort from the world and we will have our own way of reacting to these. These messages might be explicit and direct or implicit, say through body language, and might come from our parents, peers, siblings, larger family, from society as a whole, the media, or from our culture. Sometimes the messages we take in are supportive and helpful, but other times they may not support our needs and identity and might create difficult feelings and a sense of unease.

I have experience of both long, mid-term, and shorter-term although I most commonly tend to work with clients for at least 6-12 months. I'm open to working creatively, and consider the potential role of metaphor, symbolism, the arts, and the language of our body in addition to an explicit verbal narrative. As a focus of our work would be to support your personal empowerment, I cannot 'tell you' what to do. However, I am actively involved and work collaborativly, therefore offer suggestions and feedback that we can explore and evaluate together. I value the process of the therapy relationship we create together in order to explore insights into your life.