George Dickinson PGDip, MBACP

Counselling with me is a space to have someone to talk things through and to meet you as and where you are in life with total acceptance. I am not here to analyse from a distance, but rather to build a real relationship as a genuine, down to earth human being with each individual I work with. I believe that therapy provides an opportunity to engage in a process of understanding our sense of self, our body and reclaiming our responsibility and choices for how we are living. It may well be that there is something you wish to change about your life, or traumatic experiences you hope to make sense of, or to experience someone who is really listening to and valuing you. I believe that every individual needs their own kind of therapy, meaning that sessions with me are, in the immediate moment, responsive to your unique way of living and your present needs.

To uncover your experience together, bring it into awareness and understanding can be a powerful and challenging process. My way of working brings forth embodied feelings, the here-and-now experience and creative energies in a dynamic, mutual relationship built upon respect, safety and trust. This process of self-awareness can help to integrate rejected or unclaimed aspects of ourselves (such as our assertiveness, anger or vulnerability) and difficult experiences into a sense of self that allows for growth and opening up the future to new possibilities. Counselling with me is a dialogue to discover what is meaningful for you and to think about how to go about living it. My role is not to change you or do something to you, rather it is to provide a supportive relationship, to be with and for you in whatever it is that which you wish to focus on.

Drawing from existential philosophy and humanistic psychology, my approach holds that each person is the authority on their own life and that we create and choose ways to experience and relate to others and the world. The final word on your experience and what you consider to be important, right and true can only be you. I am interested in how we create meaning in life through our relationships and how our experience of these relations gives us a sense of who we are. I position people as individually responsible for their decisions, actions and how they see the world, but this does not mean that we are responsible for everything that happens to us. Rather, I believe that we have the capacity to choose how to respond to our experiences, other people and the world at large. Whilst this can be a deeply challenging idea to live by it can also be the means to live in an empowering and fulfilling way; it resolves that you can do something yourself about your situation, your feelings and your relationships.

I have a wide variety of experience and, along with my private practice, currently work as a counsellor in colleges in Brighton and Bexhill. I have previously worked in the NHS counselling doctors and nurses along with volunteering for the bereavement charity Cruse. Ultimately, the most important thing is finding a counsellor whose personality and way of working feels right for you. If you think that may be me then please feel free to get in touch to book a free initial session.