Jac Lewis

I am experienced in working with adults and young people aged 14 years and upwards covering a wide range of presenting issues. I work in private practice from my home in Berwick upon Tweed having recently moved there. I also maintain my established Edinburgh private practice online.  I offer in person sessions as well as sessions by skype, zoom and telephone. 

I have previously worked for a mental health association in Falkirk alongside my private practice. I have also worked in a secondary school offering art and play therapy to young people, and for a large adult counselling service in Edinburgh. I am a member of BACP which is a counselling professional body and work within their ethical framework. I am fully insured and have regular clinical supervision.

Before training as a counsellor, I practised for many years as a personal injury lawyer working for clients with significant physical and psychological injures. I became frustrated at the lack of time and energy that I was able to invest in listening to these clients who were struggling to adjust to life post injury. I understood that I wanted to help them in a very different way and gave up law to return to university to study to be a counsellor. I studied in the dialogue between the person centred and psychodynamic approaches and that remains my theoretical orientation.

When can counselling help?
There are times when we all experience difficult feelings which threaten to overwhelm us and prevent us doing what we want to. These feelings often arise from difficult experiences- past and present-but not always. Sometimes you might not know why you feel the way that you do. Either way, these feelings can impact on your relationships and on your life more generally. At times you might be able to cope with these feelings on your own or using your usual support systems, but at other times you might not. It is at these times that counselling can help.

What is counselling?
My aim in counselling is to help you to find the inner resources to cope better with living at those times when you are struggling on your own. My role is not to give advice because I believe that you know better than I do what is right for you. Rather I aim to create a safe and trusting space for you to be able express and explore difficult thoughts, feelings and experiences and make sense of the impact these are having on you. I will do my best to understand what is going on for you and to be alongside you as you think about where you are and where you want to be. I will help you to explore how experiences from the past are impacting on the present so that you might look at things differently and change unhelpful patterns of thinking and behaviour of which you may well not presently be aware.

What will happen when we meet?
At our first meeting I will explain a bit more about what counselling is and gather information about what brings you to counselling, as well as your hopes and expectations for the process. At the end of the meeting we will discuss whether we both feel that we can helpfully work together. Thereafter sessions take place weekly and last 50 minutes. These sessions can go on for as long as feels therapeutically beneficial. The choice to end is always yours at any time.

£50 per session

£40 concession rate for young people up to 18 years of age and in other individual circumstances which I am happy to discuss.