Marie Howard

Hello and welcome,  I combine many years of experience (including NHS) with a warm, and encouraging approach to supporting you to work through your difficulties.  I am available for face to face, online and phone sessions. 

To open up and talk about our difficulties, requires trust and a feeling of being at ease with the person we're with. I would seek to offer you this, and help you feel at home in my sunny, peaceful room, looking out onto tree tops.  

People tell me that I have a professional, sensitive and warmly human way of being as a therapist.  I am a professional Counsellor and Accredited Psychotherapist, with over 15 years of experience - including NHS.

My brand new therapy room, is accessible by lift, with an adjacent toilet suitable for wheelchair access.  Free visitor parking and disabled access parking spaces are available.

Making Contact with me:

• I would like to hear from you. Please email or phone me, then we can see if meeting up together for a free introductory session would be helpful.

Helping you - drawing on a wealth of experience:

For over 15 years, my professional work has focused on supporting people's psychological health, and encompasses a breadth of experience. I have provided psychotherapy in the NHS (Torbay), worked in the field of alcohol counselling, supported Carers in the Community and worked in a psychiatric hospital for those with more complex mental health needs.

How I would approach working with you;

• I work with sensitivity and would listen carefully as you share your experiences and respond genuinely to how you are.

• As issues are understood more fully, you may well feel less alone with them and can find new ways of being that allow you to cope better and feel more positive.

• I will also encourage you to listen inwardly to yourself, so that we can see more clearly what is important for you and what needs to be known. This process of listening inwards can be helpful in many ways - it can support you to make decisions in a clearer way in your life and allow you to reconnect to a fuller sense of who you really are.

• I would purposefully focus on your strengths and resources too, which you may feel out of touch with at present. At it's heart, my approach to therapy is rooted in Mindfulness – this is the natural ability we each have to be more aware in our lives and to live as fully as possible in this present moment.

Short or Long-term support?

• It is up to you how many sessions you need. For some people just a few sessions can help them and bring about change.

• Others may need more sessions of longer term therapy, where childhood experiences, life patterns and deeper trauma may be explored gradually and in more depth. In longer term work, it is very common to discover that an inner sense of well being has been covered up by the need to close down, due to the impact of difficulties and disappointments that have been met in life. This may mean that you have found yourself repeating unfulfilling patterns, and perhaps feel stuck in some way. Our work together may then focus on acknowledging some of the self-protective patterns and beliefs you have about yourself, which may now restrict your connection to a fuller sense of yourself.

I feel a genuine enthusiasm for this work and greatly appreciate getting to know each person and the unique personal experience they bring.

I enjoy running, gardening and being in nature.