Julie Hamilton, PgDip Couns; Dip Psych; MBACP (Registered)

What you bring to counselling will be handled with care and confidentiality; I am respectful and have a genuine desire to help. I offer the core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard and I have an unfailing hope that potential and worth may be realised in the room.

I started my journey in 2005 when I volunteered for Samaritans, but perhaps I started it even earlier still when I attended Al-Anon meetings and felt truly listened to and supported at a time when I really needed it. Whilst at Samaritans, I experienced face to face contact with people coming in off the street, and realised that I preferred the intimacy of the face to face relationship. I enquired about training as a counsellor at ACIS (Aberdeen Counselling and Information Service) and was accepted for the course. I volunteered at ACIS from 2008 until 2018 and during that time completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Person-Centred Counselling. My belief, passion and trust in the relationship has never waned. This is what I carry forward, within myself and when I first meet that tentative face in the waiting room. I offer myself and know that this will be enough. This faith has come with time, experience, self-growth and a complete trust in the process and the power of the relationship.

People look for help from counsellors and psychotherapists for many different reasons, most often (though not always) because they are in a personal crisis of some kind. This could be, for example, a bereavement, the ending of a long-term relationship, feelings of overwhelming anxiety, or just plain unhappiness.(Merry ) (page 69) Merry, Tony. Person-Centred Practice the BAPCA Reader. Herefordshire, UK: PCCS Books Ltd, 2000. Print.