Julia Heffernan-Burns
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This professional is available for new clients.
This professional is available for new clients.
About me
My name is Julia and I am a Person-Centred Counsellor based in Portsmouth, U.K.
I work with openness, honesty and integrity, and I place trust, hope, and acceptance at the centre of my work as a counsellor.
I work primarily using a Person-Centred approach, which means that I seek to facilitate and not lead your counselling process in ways that feel right for you. This means our work together will be unique to you and will involve an exploration of thoughts, feelings, and experiences as they arise. We may also consider strategies, tools, and ideas that will effectively support you throughout your counselling process and beyond it.
My focus as a counsellor is to create a safe and inclusive space for our work together.
I care about being able to show up for everything that you would like to bring to counselling and I do not want you to feel that there are things that need to be left outside of our work together (unless this is your choice). To facilitate this, I welcome an active dialogue about what you need at different times, and I invite ongoing feedback on how things are working for you so that we can ultimately reach a point where our work leaves you feeling resourced enough to no longer need my support.
Training, qualifications & experience
I trained as a Humanistic Counsellor at the University of Chichester, and I am an Individual Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).
I have previously worked with university students at the University of Portsmouth and I currently work with NHS Staff across the University Hospitals Sussex Trust.
I worked as a Specialist Mental Health and Autism Mentor with university students for several years, and, during this time, I worked with many students on the autism spectrum, as well as students with a mental health diagnosis or a specific learning difficulty. I have completed training in autism and mental health practice with Autism Hampshire, the Open University, the National Autistic Society, and Rethink Mental Illness.
I value mindfulness and meditation practice and have trained in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction with the British Mindfulness Institute.
Before working as a Mental Health Mentor, I qualified and worked as a Secondary School English Teacher, and I continue to be passionate about the power of literacy, communication, and the healing power of stories. I have trained in the use of reading and writing for creative and therapeutic purposes with the bibliotherapy organisation Zuntold and will commence working as a practitioner within this organisation later this year.
Member organisations
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred).
Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision.
Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training.
All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Therapies offered
Fees
£40.00 per session
