Katy Oswald
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This professional is available for new clients.
This professional is available for new clients.
About me
Our mental and emotional health is linked to how we feel about ourselves and our life experiences. I aim to create a relationship with you in which you can feel safe enough to talk about difficult or painful experiences, thoughts and feelings. I will not judge you, no matter what you need to talk about.
Counselling can help you start to connect with and feel differently about yourself and your experiences. It can support you to gain greater self-awareness and acceptance.
My approach to counselling is mainly person-centred, meaning I will work at your pace. I see counselling as a reflective partnership that helps you become more self-aware.
I also draw on Gestalt, Transactional Analysis, and Feminist approaches to therapy.
For example, we might explore:
- How there may be different, seemingly contradictory, parts of you, and how you can become more comfortable with them all;
- How you relate to others and how you can break out of patterns of unhealthy relationships;
- How the story you tell about yourself might be limiting your awareness and acceptance of yourself;
- How you might self-sabotage and behave in ways that block you;
- How you feel about yourself and how that is shaped by your experiences;
- How you respond to challenging life events and how you can deal with them differently;
- How past difficult or painful experiences can keep you "stuck" in the past.
Training, qualifications & experience
I am an experienced counsellor, with a PGDip in Humanistic Psychotherapeutic Counselling from the University of Brighton, and I am an accredited member of the BACP.
I have worked in the voluntary sector as a counsellor for As You Are, a low-cost counselling charity in Southwick. I am also an Associate Lecturer for the Open University, teaching on a module called "Exploring counselling and mental health".
I have a BSocSc and MPhil in the social sciences and, previous to training as a counsellor, I was a teacher and researcher at the University of Sussex for 12 years. I work with a bio-psycho-social approach to mental health, recognising that how we feel about ourselves will be shaped by not just our personal experiences and relationships, but also the communities and societies we live in.
I adopt an inter-sectional approach. I recognise that how we feel about ourselves and how we are treated by society is shaped by many different aspects of our identity, including our gender, race, class, age and sexuality. If we feel we are discriminated against because of aspects of our identity, this can have a significant impact on our mental health.
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.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Therapies offered
Fees
Up to £60.00
Free initial in-person or online session
Concessions offered for
Additional information
I offer counselling either in-person or via video calls. I offer an initial free 50 minute appointment so we can get to know one another and decide if we want to work together. In this session we can discuss what you want from counselling, and you can get a feel for how I work and decide if that is right for you. You are under no obligation to continue.
If we do decide to continue working together, regular appointments are 50 minutes and cost £60.
I believe counselling should be accessible to all, therefore I offer a limited number of concessional rates of £40 for students and people on low incomes.
When I work
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