Francisca D'Souza

Hello and welcome. I am an Integrative Counsellor and Coach and offer sessions online and over the phone.  I know that finding the right therapist is often the most challenging part hence, I have provided you with some information about my practice. If you feel you would like more information, please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to working with you.

How I work

My clients come to me for help with their anxiety, depressive thoughts/ feelings, sexuality, past trauma, relationship issues, low self-esteem, anger and other such difficulties. I offer a warm, confidential and non-judgemental space for us to work together and for you to find your way forward. In the safety of the room, I invite you to share your thoughts, feelings and difficult experiences in order for us to work collaboratively at managing them so that you can live a rich and meaningful life.

As I am trained in counselling and coaching, I offer a more unique approach to my sessions by combining both processes. The reason I do this is because I find that clients often don’t only want to explore their thoughts and feelings (what counselling tends to offer) but also want support to make specific changes to their lives or achieve specific goals (what coaching tends to offer). I want to enable clients to achieve both these aspects during therapy, so we spend time exploring and understanding difficulties, identifying unhelpful patterns of thoughts and behaviours, learning new skills and then using these skills to make positive changes. My clients have said that this approach has resulted in them actually taking concrete actions in their lives, helping them experience positive results.

The way I work depends entirely on the client and what you want. It is essential that you decide how you want to work in the session and what is important for you. I will from time to time, offer options of where we could go and what we could focus on but it is you who makes the decision as I firmly believe that you know yourself the best. I like to see myself as a passenger in your car, I will help you navigate and identify route options but as you are in the driver’s seat, you decide on the destination, which route we take and how long we spend exploring areas.

My Approach

As an Integrative therapist, I'm trained in a range of modalities, so I tailor my approach to suit your needs. I use a combination of techniques and tools from Person-Centred therapy, Psychodynamic, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, Existentialist therapy and Solution Focus therapy. Where relevant, I will teach you how to connect with your body, use guided meditation, visualisation, and grounding exercises to help manage difficult thoughts, emotions and situations.

In addition to this, I also use some coaching techniques to help my clients make changes in their lives, moving from thinking about goals to working on achieving them.

How many sessions will it take?

Each person is different so it is not a ‘one size fits all’. The number of sessions and the length of time all depends on where the client is in their life’s journey and what difficulties they want to work on. Each client’s circumstances are different so it all depends on what you would like to get out of therapy and how long you wish to attend. You can attend as few or as many as you would like. We can most definitely discuss this and agree on the number of sessions during the initial assessment.

What to expect in the first session

I am currently only seeing clients online using a video platform or over the telephone.

I will invite you to talk a little about what brings you to therapy, your goals (if you have any) and what you think you would like to get out of it. You can also ask me any questions you may have about counselling. I will do the same and ask you a few questions about you and take your history. You are encouraged to share only as much as you feel comfortable sharing during the session, so do not feel pressured to reveal anything you don’t want to. Do not worry about being nervous, it is only natural and happens to everyone.

BACP Registered Member 389797