Counsellor Martin Linton, Cwmbran & Cardiff

About me

Hello and Welcome...

***Due to the current Covid-19 escalation, I have switched my practice to distance working as much of the counselling and GP communities, (Friday 13). Hopefully this will be temporary, avoid unnecessary spreading of the virus, and serve social health...
This means sessions are now conducted effectively by video call as the safest way forewords...

Please Keep Safe! ***

I have practiced approaches for emotional calming since the 1980’s - these methods have never been so useful as now and are proving invaluable for people including frontline workers in the current crisis situation.

https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/blog/details/651/going-beyond-mindfulness-with-internal-family-systems

***

Individuals & couples come to see me in confidential private counselling / therapy:

1). To make the most of their lived, living and unlived experiences for well-being by generating clear self-awareness / connection with calm to deepen its embodiment, also dissolve and give relief from systemic anxiety.

2). Because they find "theirselves" struggling, require assistance to improve their realtionships with difficult problem/s, and to generate preferred emotional outcomes.

The skill-sets and experience I offer draw off a variety of professional trainings for assisting people who maybe experiencing a need for relational change with "their selves", others, or to simply enhance their wellbeing for possible futures. For example: This could be by enabling the potentials of felt experiences to change the difficult patterns of emotional communication towards more wholesome and meaningful interactions - a holistic relationship with a clarity of wider perspectives that can, indeed, make impossible feelings possible.

The contexts of practice I draw from focus on the relationships that exist both inside personal experiences / thoughts / emotions / feelings about the mind and body, whilst observing external patterns and social contexts that can surround, inform, generate, construct, bind with and relation with these inner realities - for the co-creation of emotional freedom.

My “experienced” dialogical & experiential practice incorporates the cutting-edge of therapy world to blend mindful healing practices that elicits a sense of deepening freedom by generating the healthy embodiment of calm, for many people this becomes the needed difference that enriches their life.

I feel deeply honoured to meet people as their counsellor and witness their transformation.

What to Expect:

Empathic, compassionate, respectful and safe attention.
A warm, honest, collaborative / dialogical therapeutic relationship.
Connection with a person who has also experienced adversity and has experienced the benefits of the therapeutic process.
Assistance and trust towards meeting clients realistic therapeutic needs.
An amalgam of containment, listening, creativity, coaching, gentle challenge and encouragement towards the potentials of wholesome well-being.
Emerging difference with new communicative ways and calm, the newness of change / newness may initially feel more than familiar.
An opportunity to discover, tune emotional communication (feelings), and express yourself fully.
Value-based focus with mindful attunement from extensive experience.
Results with male and female clients.

Training, qualifications & experience

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. Major Employer referrals, General Public / Private, Mind, Doctor referrals / Hospital referrals, Social issues, and also referrals from other counsellors. All this is complimentary to a wide scope of transferable skills and understandings from my previous role as a staff mentor where I coached to cope with difficulty and stress. My work / personal life experience has taken me to a broad array of demographics / contexts / and situations where counselling / coaching skills and knowledge have been key.
Qualifications:
Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFST) Psychotherapy / Practitioner. I have completed the practitioner Mastering Skills trainings and all required levels (1,2, & 3) of the IFST 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 calming 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 Midful Dialogism (MD) to co-create ways for empathic understandings together with clients unique choices and healing process, as the relational aspects develop.

Member organisations

Registered / Accredited

Accredited register membership

Areas of counselling I deal with

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.

Therapies offered

Cognitive and behavioural therapies
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
Cognitive therapy
Compassion-Focused Therapy
Couples counselling
Existential therapy
Family/systemic therapy
Humanistic therapies
Integrative
Mindfulness
Other therapies
Person-centred therapy
Psychodynamic therapy
Schema Therapy
Solution focused brief therapy

Fees

Additional information

Professional Fees are generally set within the demographic and are negotiable depending on circumstances / availability.

Discounted optionas are usually possible in daytime slots (can be arranged during sessions). Exceptions for reduced fees may be possible (e.g. students).

Sliding Scale: £40-70

Typically sessions are 1 full hour limited duration, but can be negotiated to a suited relational and practical frequency during our meetings. Extended and back to back sessions can be arranged [discounted rate] to benefit specific contexts such as Single Session Therapy for trauma reconstruction, more deeply focused work, IFS, or confidential relationship workshops - IFIO (workshops are usually held at weekends).

My Services - "individuals & couples"

Single Session Therapy, (back to back hours in one session): to attend crisis for individual trauma or for relationship /maintenance / repair workshops / IFS / IFIO.
Short Term Therapy, (up to 6 sessions).
Brief Therapy (6-12 sessions).
Long-term Relational Counselling (unlimited sessions).

More about my position as a counsellor can be seen on my website link at the top of this page. Otherwise, please contact me with any queries, conversations outside of simply arranging appointments are chargeable.

Safety: Please be mindful about the disclosure sensitive information within emails / texts.

I feel privileged to work with adults who have made it their own decision to enter a counselling relationship, being useful for their self and relational well-being.

Locations: Cardiff CF10 (Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, all day), Cwmbran NP44 (Monday, Tuesday's, all day).

Please, clearly state the location that you require, in your email correspondence.

Availability

Please enquire...

Further information

Therapeutic results

Therapeutic results come about via Dialogical Mindful Transformation / Therapy (DMT) 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 - differentiated clear awareness.