Kate Heavey

Welcome. I hope my profile gives you a sense of how I work.

My current availability is listed at the bottom of this page so you can check whether I have a weekly slot that works for you before getting in touch.

Online and Telephone Counselling

I offer online and telephone counselling across the UK and have been working remotely since 2014. I work with individuals, couples and twos, helping clients explore their thoughts, feelings, behaviours and patterns so they can better understand themselves and their relationships.

Couple, Marriage and Twos Counselling
Seeking couple or twos counselling generally falls into three categories:

•       To grow, develop or change your relationship
•       To make a decision about your relationship
•       To separate amicably

(please note I work with options 1 and 2 only)

Reasons you may be seeking couple or twos counselling:

•       Conflict, arguing or persistent difference
•       Affairs, betrayal, infidelity or low trust
•       Attachment difficulties, avoidance or neediness in relationship
•       Lack of intimacy or changes in your sex life
•       Communication breakdown and growing distance
•       Feeling like strangers in your own relationship
•       One partner appeases whilst the other withdraws
•       Addiction, including alcohol and pornography
•       Rejection, abandonment or ghosting
•       Unpleasant feelings including fear, resentment, anger and jealousy
•       Baggage from past relationships including trust, pain and patterns
•       Family of origin conflict or mother and father wounds
•      Loss of self within the relationship
•       Lost connection with your partner
•       Relationship changes such as marriage, parenting, miscarriage, IVF or bereavement.

Whatever has brought you here, healing comes from taking different action. Through understanding your patterns and realising what you can do differently, you are empowered to make different choices.

Relationships

The most important relationship you have is the one with yourself. How do you feel about you? Do you feel good enough? What you have learnt about yourself, whether through others or in your own life experiences, will inform you and the story you tell yourself about relationships.

Do you feel overwhelmed or not good enough? Maybe you are finding it hard to get past feelings of hurt and pain. It is absolutely true that we are in relationship everywhere and they really can feel like life or death.

Relational therapy helps you to talk about your inner world. My aim is for you to feel comfortable and to become more settled within yourself. The ripple effect: you will then have more choice in how you relate with others. Whether you choose to be in relationship or to be alone, it becomes your choice rather than a reaction from an unhealed wound.

Low Self-Esteem and the Selfs

Experiencing low self-esteem, low self-confidence and questioning your self-worth means you are likely to have a washing machine head where you self-blame, self-criticise and self-sabotage. These feelings can be linked to an old story given to you due to a lack of prizing and championing in the past, or to beliefs you have developed as you have lived your life. Simply put, those thoughts are not true.

We are all born as our authentic Self and are absolutely good enough. Therapy is about reuniting you with who you were before all of these life adaptions happened.

Anxiety

Anxiety tends to mean you live in the next moment rather than within your present experience. You are more likely to have a washing machine head where thoughts go round and round, and symptoms may include procrastination, indecisiveness, worry and fear.

The aim of therapy is to come off survival mode so you can embrace life today, accepting that your thoughts and feelings are momentary and do not have to last a lifetime. In a nurturing, compassionate way you begin to embrace a full life, becoming vulnerable and experiencing more of what brings you joy, excitement and inner peace.

Life Dissatisfaction

Do you spend a lot of your energy trying to fit in, keeping the peace or being over responsible for other people? You may continually pre-empt how someone will respond to you and change what you say before you say it as you worry about being disliked.  Maybe you learnt to do these behaviours in order to belong.

Feeling dissatisfied can happen if you are not where you feel you should be. If you feel you are under performing, not good enough or simply wrong, it can leave you feeling less than on a day to day basis.

By looking at your inner world, and shifting your view slightly, the aim of therapy is to move you from a sense of dissatisfaction and uneasiness to feeling satisfied, settled and stable.

Loss and Bereavement

On a minute by minute, hourly and daily basis we attach to people, ideas and concepts and when these attachments do not come to fruition we experience loss. This happens numerous times a day and can leave unpleasant feelings such as sadness, anger and resentment and a sense of feeling stuck.

In therapy, learning about the loss cycle gives you a tool to work through difficult feelings with understanding and self-compassion, knowing you are always doing your best. Loss work helps move from a place of feeling done to, stuck or frustrated, to a place where you feel you again have a voice and a choice.

I draw on the work of David Kessler, Julia Samuel and William Worden, bringing a deep and current understanding of grief to my work. Loss does not only mean death. It includes the end of relationships, of roles, or the life you thought you would have.

Childhood Relational Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Childhood experiences become life experiences. A child who feels alone, unseen or unsupported experiences deep pain which can leave unhealed experiences of abandonment and rejection. These can show up as fear and self-protection.

If you experienced childhood difficulties, you may find you have patterns in relationships that cost you dearly. This could be accepting less than you deserve, finding it hard to trust, or feeling you have to earn your place and suppress your own needs to do it. This is all part of survival.

Mother and father wounds can sit at the heart of this. Whether it was a mother whose approval felt impossible to earn, who was critical, absent or unable to nurture, or a father who was emotionally unavailable, dismissive or simply not there, these early experiences shape how you feel about yourself and how you view your own worth. Many clients who come to me arrive carrying low self-worth and a sense of not being good enough, without knowing where it began.

Therapy offers a place to look at how the past is continuing to inform you today. Together we work on integrating those experiences so you begin to see yourself more clearly, building your self-worth and finding a more grounded way of living as you.

Alcohol, Food and Coping Strategies

Alcohol and food can become ways of managing an inner world that feels overwhelming. Both can sit within a wider pattern of childhood experience, family wounding and relationship difficulty. Substances can offer comfort when connection and belonging feel out of reach. Working on the root causes rather than the symptoms alone is where understanding and lasting change happens.

By looking at your relationship with the substance or behaviour, we can find other ways to assist you in looking after you. What is absolutely true is that your coping strategies have worked 100% in their own way as you are still alive! What you may want now is a different way of living where you no longer need to escape life.

As a counsellor, psychotherapist and relationship practitioner
I am very much informed by attachment theory and neuroscience, and I form healthy bonds quickly. My role, whether you are here as an individual, a couple or a two, is to have your back, root for you and cheerlead you as you build a life where you feel more settled as you.  

HOW do we do therapy? With Honesty, Openmindedness and Willingness. There is no Artificial Intelligence involved. Just human to human, heart to heart, mind to mind connection.

Who I work with
Adults age 18+. Working with the general public. EAP corporations and I am passionate about offering personal therapy to trainee counsellors.

A Bupa, AXA, WPA, Allianz, Aviva and Vitality approved counsellor and psychotherapist.

Location
I work online and by telephone with clients across the UK, from my home offices in Alfold (near Cranleigh), Surrey and Throwley (near Faversham), Kent. Wherever you live, distance is not an issue as we can meet by video or telephone.

Counselling and Psychology Students / Trainees

I am integratively trained in the Clarkson 5 Relational Model.  I am passionate about working with counselling students and feel it is an honour to be chosen to explore this part of your life with you.

Initial 60 minute session: complimentary for individuals and £50 for couples (due to pre-assessment work).

An initial session enables the taking of a brief history and for us to discuss your goals in counselling and how we would work together moving forward. This is offered when there is a regular weekly appointment time that suits you.

All sessions are 60 minutes, rather than 50 minutes, and costs are:-

Individual counselling - £65

Couple counselling - £85

Counselling students - £50

(my modality is Clarkson Five Relational Model)

Employee Assisted Programme:-

I am a BUPA, Aviva, Allianz, AXA, WPA and Vitality Health Recognised psychotherapist.

If you are insured with any of these companies you will need to follow their instructions (contacting them, providing me with your policy /approval number and details of how many sessions have been approved).

**Update 19 October**

Available weekly slots: -

Online / Telephone

Tuesday 9.30am
Wednesday 9.30am or 3.30pm.

I am fully insured, have an up-to-date enhanced DBS check and I am ICO registered (GDPR).

I am a Petruska Clarkson Five Relationship Model trained relational counsellor and integrate four different approaches:-  person centred, psychodynamic, existential and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).  I offer a flexible way of working centred on you, the client(s).

My approach includes reflection on the past, creative work, mindfulness, visualisations, drawing, poetry, etc. as all can provide a way of accessing the unconscious mind.

Websites

https://www.harmoniouscounselling.com
https://myrelationshipcounselling.com