George Dickinson

About me

Modern life moves fast. When we are going through a hard time the fast pace of life may leave us thinking that no-one is listening. I started counselling to listen to people who don’t feel heard, helping them get on the path that they want to, and supporting them through making changes that could lead to feeling deeper satisfaction in life. I have formed trusting relationships with diverse people working with a wide range of distresses, but the essential thing for me is to recognise what makes you unique and treat you with the respect and dignity you deserve.

As a humanistic counsellor, my focus is on you and how you make meaning and relate to the world. I will work with you in a collaborative way to help you make sense of yourself, relationships and the world as you see it; to strengthen your autonomy and support new choices in getting you to where you want to be. Rather than analyse you, I will be with you in your struggle and distress to help you to make sense of what is happening in your life. I will work with you to support raising your awareness to what might not be working for you anymore and thinking about changing old habits.

I am an Existential-Gestalt counsellor, meaning that I emphasise working with our feelings and thoughts as they arise to make an active and creative counselling experience. I believe that we carry much of our emotional life in our bodies and by listening more to what our body tells us we can enrich our experience of living. If you think about a time when you forgot your keys or lost something you might recall feeling a physical shock before you realised. These are the kinds of messages our body gives us to let us know something is up, by paying attention to these in counselling we can learn a lot about how we relate to people and the world. Existential counselling focuses on the struggles of human beings and what it is that gives life meaning for us. In short, it is about how we create meaningful experiences and rests on the foundation that everyone is different and experiences the world in different ways.

I use both of these ways of working to bring what happens in our immediate experience into focus so that the ways in which we relate to ourselves and others can be better understood. I work holistically, meaning that everything is connected, be it mind, body, relationships and the world around us. By increasing our awareness to every aspect of us and our world as much as we are able, we can start to live a fuller life. This can help to look at how the past has impacted on how we see things now, changing the way we form relationships and opening up new possibilities.