Elisabeth Bowen MBACP (Accred)

You might be looking at this website because life feels too difficult to manage at the moment. Something has upset your natural balance. It could be a life-changing event or the demands of everyday life, but somehow they have started a vicious circle of negative thoughts and anxiety that threaten to overwhelm you.

Talking to an experienced practitioner can help and bring relief to your emotional pain. Together we can make sense of what is happening and develop strategies that will help you live a rich and fulfilled life again.

I am an experienced BACP accredited psychodynamic and EMDR trained counsellor. I trained at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London, at a BACP accredited Training Centre in Kent and with Sandi Richman (Accredited Trainer and Consultant in EMDR). Before focusing entirely on my private practice I worked as a senior counsellor at a counselling centre for adults in Tunbridge Wells and as a tutor at a BACP accredited training centre for counsellors. Besides that I was a member of the counselling team at Burrswood Health and Wellbeing.

My practice offers a place where you can talk freely about things that are troubling you. Together we can explore the cause of these. Reflecting on early experiences and significant events in your life helps you understand the root of thinking or behavioural patterns. The exploration and understanding of unhelpful thinking patterns will enable you to gradually make changes and to live a truer and more fulfilled life.

More about EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) EMDR is a form of psychotherapy that helps to change unprocessed material to a more adaptive memory. Unprocessed material can act like a foreign body in the emotional wound and prevent it from healing. EMDR aims to remove this to allow the mind to resume its natural healing process.

Following detailed protocols the clinician will ask the client to hold the most disturbing aspect of that memory in mind while undergoing bilateral stimulation through either eye movement or tapping. Through mechanisms connected to the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) during sleep, internal associations arise and the client will begin to process the disturbing feelings associated with the memory. The memory of painful events is transformed on an emotional level leaving the client feeling empowered.

How can you contact me?   You can send me an email via the link on this website with your contact details and the best time to call you or call me directly on the above number. It may feel daunting to speak with a counsellor for the first time. Please do not worry. We will have an informal phone call where you can tell me what is troubling you and I can answer any questions you may have about counselling. We can then arrange a date and time for our first meeting.

What happens next? Our first meeting will be an opportunity for us to speak about what is troubling you in more detail and for me to explain to you how I work and how counselling can help you. If we both feel that counselling will benefit you we will agree a day and a time for us to meet on a weekly basis.