Kate Heavey

What a minefield looking for a therapist can be!  I attempt to make this as easy as possible for you to feel comfortable in contacting me.  This includes section headings you can go straight to and I have detailed my current availability at the end so you are aware if I can accommodate you from outset.  

Online and Telephone Counselling

I have been offering online and telephone counselling since 2014. Therapy is about what works for you, and today's options mean you are not limited by where you live. Video or telephone, your setting, your schedule, your decision.

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: options 1 and 2 I work with. I do not offer separation-only counselling)

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.

Individual Counselling

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 along life's journey. 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

This can come if you feel you are not where you feel you should be. If you feel you are under performing, not good enough or simply wrong, you may feel less than. Through looking at your inner world, and shifting your view slightly, the aim of therapy is to move you from dissatisfied to satisfied.

Feelings of not fitting in, appeasing to belong, losing your voice, and carrying a sense of wrongness into work and friendships are symptoms I work with regularly. You are not wrong. You are responding to what you learned.

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 Experiences

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 often 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 find alternative ways to supporting you. Your coping strategies have worked in their own way as you are still alive! What you want now is a way of living where you no longer need to escape.

About me
As a therapist

As a relational therapist 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 along your journey to 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.

I am a Bupa, AXA, WPA, Aviva and Vitality approved counsellor and psychotherapist.

Location

I work online and by telephone with clients across the whole of the UK. I continue to offer face to face sessions from my 'office in the garden'  in Alfold, near Cranleigh in Surrey. This is a south facing conservatory which has a tranquil outlook onto the garden (see photos) where you can hear the sound of running water and be amongst calmness.

Training, qualifications & experience 

BACP Accredited Counsellor and Psychotherapist. Qualified in individual and couples / marriage work.

BA Hons and Foundation Degree in Counselling.

In excess of 10,000 private practice therapy hours.  The whole of my working career (35 yrs+) has consisted of building relationship whether this be with the public or in corporations.  Since 2014 I have been working in my own Private Practice.  

Feedback informs that I am a passionate, patient, friendly, honest, empathic counsellor, psychotherapist and relationship practitioner.  

I am a firm believer in 'I'm ok, You're ok*' and it is our work together that creates change as you are the expert on you.

Previous Experience

Voluntary counsellor at Sam Beare hospice working with bereaved carers and families. Voluntary work at RASASC working with rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse (both men and women). 

Qualifications - Qualified in Individual and Couple Work

Individual Training

BA (Hons) in Counselling (University of Greenwich)
Foundation Degree in Integrative Counselling (University of Greenwich)
BACP Accredited Registered Member (093164)
NCFE 1 - Interpersonal Skills
NCFE 2 - Counselling (Helping) Skills
NCFE 3 - Counselling Skills Theory

Couple Training

Graduate of The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy Training under Ellyn Bader Ph.D. at The Couples Institute (integrating Attachment Theory, Differentiation Theory and Neuroscience)
Advanced Certificate in Relationship Therapy (College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists, COSRT)
Relational Life Therapy - Level 1
Introduction to use of Attachment Theory When Working With Couples (International Attachment Network)
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) Workshop

Online Training

Moving Your Practice Online (Online Therapy Institute)
How to do counselling online: A Coronavirus Primer (Open University and BACP course)

Walk and Talk Therapy

Walk and Talk - Therapy In The Outdoors (Creative Counsellors)
As part of continued professional development I keep my training up to date to continually keep abreast of developments in the therapy world (including neuroscience). 

Counselling and Psychology Students / Trainees

I am integratively trained in the Clarkson 5 Relational Model and welcome hearing from you.  I am passionate about working with counselling students and feel it is an honour to be chosen to be on your journey of discovery with you.

Walk and Talk Therapy / Outdoor Therapy / Ecotherapy

Being located in Alfold, means I have easy access to the countryside.  45 minute walks are available from two locations in my area.

Utilising nature as part of therapy gives a  grounding experience.  Exercise and movement boosts endorphins offering a break from sitting therapy.

Initial 60 minute session: complimentary for individuals and £50 for couples (due to pre-assessment work) whether this is face to face, online or telephone counselling.

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 an BUPA, Aviva, 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 15 July**

Current availability: -

None. 

I am not currently taking on new clients.

If you wish to be added to a waiting list, please email me with your availability for sessions advising if it is F2F, online or telephone you require. 

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