Martin Linton, (Individuals & Couples).

Training, qualifications & experience

• Internal Family Systems (IFS) Psychotherapy / Practitioner. I have completed the practitioner Mastering Skills trainings and all required levels (1,2, & 3) of the IFS-T training program.  IFS-Therapy is the new wave of very effective Systemic Practice that is both evidence and practice-based, mindful, safe and non-pathologizing 4th wave psychotherapy for individuals - this means it heals without putting the fault on "you" by compassionately valuing you and your inner systems to the seat of existence.
• Intimacy From the Inside Out (IFIO) Couples / Relationship Therapy.  IFIO assists people to work through difficulty or simply enhance relational quality. I am privileged to offer this fresh and different approach for couples / relationship work, enabling difficult conversations to become both possible, safe and intimate.  I believe, IFIO provides a way to elicit what humans innately crave. IFIO is a unique blend of traditional Imago Therapy fused with "Systemic Ideas" through utilising IFS Practice, with a balancing relational approach.
• Systemic Practice (BACP Accredited), Post Graduate: Couples and Family orientated approaches in psychotherapy.
• Systemic Counselling (BACP Accredited), BSc Hons: integrating Vipassana - Mindfulness / phenomenology / Existentialist and Mentalization within Systemic Thinking (The home of Solution Focused Therapy).
• CBT: Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (3rd Wave / Mindfulness based), studied with a focus on Trauma therapies (TFCBT).
• Trauma Therapy: "Rewind" practitioner, (trained directly by Dr Muss 2015). An effective way to quickly relieve traumatic feelings.
• Diploma: Systemic Counselling, (Solution Focused constructivist, Modernist strategic / structural, and Post-modern non-pathologising theory - integrating IFS theory and practices).
• Diploma: Psychotherapeutic Counselling, (Solution Focused, Humanistic, and traditional Cognitive Behavioural Therapies).
• Integrative Studies: i.e. Three Routes of Counselling (Traditional: Humanistic, Psychodynamic and Rational Emotive Cognitive Behavioural Therapies).
• Metacognition: Embedding the Self in Culture: Brain plasticity and how to achieve it for self-development at the Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute.
• Vipassana Practice (Mindfulness stress reduction and coping tequniques): Experiential acceptance and commitment training and consultation. This involves the therapeutic use of "metta balm" consciousness and compassion focused strategies; useful for therapeutic work with craving / compulsion, depression, anxiety and trauma.
• Relationship Rescue. Workshop delivered ideas and technique for couples counselling.
• Conflict Resolution Practices. Basic human relations training for both private and social practice (relationship mediation and coaching).
• EMDR. Workshop for stress reduction by using left and right consciousness'.
• EFT. Workshop for stress reduction by using meridian points, pressure and the energies contained inside the body.
• Intrusive Thoughts & The Critical Inner Voice. Workshop influenced by IFS ideas.
• ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Trained) Suicide Prevention trained + updated.

My Aim

My aim is to allow these factors within counselling sessions to co-create ways for empathic understandings together with clients unique choices and healing process, as the relational aspects develop.

My experience

As a counsellor my professional experience has enabled me to deal with the wide range of presenting issues. My speciality is finding and working with the trauma that often is the root of other issues that communicate as symptoms. This means I am used to working with a wide range of presenting problems. e.g. General Public / Private, Mind, Doctor referrals / Hospital referrals, Employer referrals / EAP, Social issues, and also referrals from other counsellors. All this is complimentary to a wide scope of transferable skills and understandings from my work as a staff mentor where I coached to cope with difficulty and stress. My work / personal life experience have taken me to a broad array of demographics / contexts / and situations where counselling / coaching skills and knowledge have been key.

Other areas of counselling I deal with

• Non-Voyeuristic Counselling (unspeakables),
• Emotional Dissolution (generating relief),
• It has all contribute to who I am, but is it really me?
• Inner children, others - influence bound (burdens).
• Excessive Shame / Guilt (leagacy narratives).
• Living with the effects of medical birth,
• Living with Asthma and / or Allergies.

Further information

Therapeutic results

• Therapeutic results come about via dialogue or with additional experiential practices to free-up the system.
• The focus can be on a particular issue or with multiple aspects of the relational system.
• Work with the counsellor and client within a collaborative value-based system.
• Manifest beneficial results with both males and females of varying ages.

Enhanced Public Child and Adult DBS clearance is in place.

• Telephone counselling is a last resort option for senior citizens / disabled and in the event of online drop-out.
• Internet counselling coming soon.

In today’s culture its normal for people to reach a point where they may feel distressed. Life can feel burdened rather than free and calm. On a logical level human beings can argue with our selves that "all should be fine" - yet somehow things can remain with feelings and meanings that suggest things are not right. People can find themselves stressed, having to create new ways to make changes to move away from mental suffering / illness, solve emotional charge, make more sense of their life - or considering themselves relatively healthy simply desire to find something to assist their living existence, with enriched wholesome experience...

It intrigues me how emotive communication can create detachment from, or be attaching towards, a person’s innate vital qualities. The counselling approaches I offer attends and explores these intricacies, experiences, patterns and parts of human experience both at the logical and emotional levels. This means I don't just work with thoughts but also with the contextual aspects that inform a persons thoughts i.e. what generates the thought patterns along with the thoughts themselves. This is to enable clearer listening, understandings, adjustments and the arising possibilities of new found perspectives and inner freedom.