About me
Hello
I'm Pamela
I offer warmth, honesty, compassion and respectfulness in my counselling work. I try to build a trusting relationship where you feel safe and comfortable enough to talk about whatever you need to without fear of being judged.
Most people come to counselling because of some sort of difficulty in their life, perhaps a crisis or possibly simply a feeling that life has more to offer.
I will help you to explore the issues that have brought you here and in doing so I hope that you will find ways to ease the distress you are feeling.
I am a person-centred counsellor and believe that you are the expert on your own life. I do not offer my answers but I can try to help you find your answers and they are the only answers of any real value to you. That might sound a bit scary but we will work together at your pace.
My way of working with you is traditional counselling based around talking but I offer you gentle challenge to help you explore your thoughts and ideas. I like to bring a little humour into our sessions when it feels right.
I am particularly interested in working with people with stress and anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress, relationships problems, bereavement and loss, self harming, and with difference and disability.
I work in a non pathologising way with gender, sexual and relationship diversity.
Training, qualifications & experience
I qualified as a person centred counsellor in 2017. I hold a Post Graduate Diploma in Counselling & Psychotherapy from Strathclyde University. I began my training after going through two years of counselling myself and finding it quite transformative.
Before that I had worked in a variety of roles in nursing. I want to say that nursing and counselling share an interest in working with people but I think that counselling is very different indeed.
I initially worked as a volunteer counsellor with various organisations. This meant I worked with people from widely varied backgrounds and with very varied issues they were bringing to counselling.
Two years ago I decided to go into private practice but I also worked with a charity which offered counselling to people affected by brain tumours. In that role I was able to draw on my nursing knowledge to inform my counselling role although I have very definitely left nursing behind and would never offer medical advice.
From these experiences I have developed a particular interest in offering counselling to people who have had difficult or traumatic experiences during medical treatment or have felt rejected or ignored by medical staff or other counselling organisations.
I am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and work to its code of ethics.
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
£50.00 per session
Additional information
I offer prospective clients a 20 - 30 minute phone call to allow us to get to know a bit about each other and to decide whether we think we want to work together.
I also offer concessionary rates to clients who are unable to pay the full fee.
