Mark Welsh

Hello I'm Mark and thanks for stopping by. I guess, you may be feeling nervous, not quite sure of what to do next, feeling perhaps a loss of direction or just feeling what's the point or I can't be bothered really. It's okay to feel any or perhaps all of these; we're all just trying to do our best and who said it was going to be easy or plain sailing anyway?

A little of my story

Well done if you're still reading. I'm pleased you're still with me. I guess it's my turn now, so I work as a counsellor and have done in my own practice for over seven years now.  Alongside this, I have also volunteered with two charities in Cambridge supporting people who have experienced childhood trauma and working with people who have lost loved ones. I continue to volunteer with a local charity that offers long term therapeutic support to those who have experienced early or developmental trauma.  Before counselling, I had been teaching for almost 25 years in further education (16 to adult) in Cambridge, London and abroad.  

A little about the work

Over the last seven years, I qualified in 2016, I have found that people who I have worked with or counselled have generally responded to being accepted for who they are, not being judged but being heard; feeling like they have a voice in the counselling room. They can then take that voice outside to use as a vital resource in their own lives which could allow them to make the changes they feel they would like to, just to not feel adrift or rudderless anymore.

Thoughts such as what's the point, I don't know what to do, nobody listens to me anymore, or I'm invisible may have a history so I work with the history and sometimes these thoughts can have their roots in childhood, sometimes in families or sometimes in relationships and sometimes it can be a blend of all three, so that's where the work would be. We look at the context, perhaps identify problematic thoughts, feelings or behaviours and we build from there. Perhaps reconnecting the fragments which may have become separated down the years, through particular circumstances or situations which you may have experienced as a child, teenager or adult but looking back may see them now as being perhaps not so helpful.

How long will it last and how will I know?

Sometimes people are okay with 6 sessions or 12 sessions, others may prefer longer or open-ended work. Only you can decide when the time is right and you have had enough. Usually I have found when your gaze turns outwards rather than inwards, this can be a real sign of movement. Another way of looking at it is when your world turns from grey (people often looking down so all they see is the ground) to colour (people looking straight ahead or up to see the world in colour or 3D)

Some counselling language

If you're looking for the technical or counselling language, then I initially trained as a humanistic counsellor (identifying blockages that thwart human potential) though I have also had training in Adlerian counselling (more about identifying our internal scripts carried from childhood and looking at how these have shaped our lives in what could be socially harmful or helpful ways with a view to helping us to gain a sense of belonging within our relationships and communities) Much of the cognitive work of the present, you may have heard of CBT or cognitive behavioural therapy is grounded in Adlerian psychology.  So the subsequent cognitive training I have had in CBT and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) as well as CFT (Compassion Focussed Therapy) and more recently DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy) has all grown quite naturally from my earlier training.

CPD or Continuing Professional Development

I am a great believer in ongoing learning and training (CPD) I learn so much from my work and hopefully the people I work with learn too. Continuing professional development is also a good sign of professional and ethical practice too and I am a keen supporter of the BACP's (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) Ethical Framework which you can look up online if you wish. It's in the public domain.

I have outlined my current CPD and past mandatory counselling training below but most importantly, a big thanks for reading this far. 

Harmful sexual behaviour and compulsions.

£45 per (60 minute) hour.

£30 for first session of one hour.

Counsellor or Therapist/ Psychotherapist

Sometimes clients ask what is the difference between a counsellor and a therapist/ psychotherapist. Perhaps a better way to approach this question is to reframe it in terms of the work. They all work to create a therapeutic alliance with the client which offers then a space in which clients can explore their issues with the counsellor/therapist working as an ally to encourage them to recognise a unique way forward for them, so potentially more than 7 billion ways as each client is a unique world within themselves. Essentially then it is a therapeutic way of working which typically begins with a period of exploration, which can lead to insight and this in turn could result in change leading to personal growth.

Carl Rogers and Potatoes 

(Striving to Become; a Key Tenet of the Person Centred Approach.)

"I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter’s supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavourable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout — pale, white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency ... [and] under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up... In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the back wards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavourable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted ... Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behaviour is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming." 

Carl Rogers  (A Way of Being 1980)

A Short Note about the Business

Just a short note to add, in terms of the business, it's just me, Mark . I don't employ any staff, counsellors or admin staff, so when I email clients for example, it's always 'I' as in me personally rather than 'we' as in the company/ organisation. So, business wise, I prefer to keep things small scale, focusing on the individual needs of each of my clients, while keeping up to date with research, training and supervision.