Rebeca Paiva

I am fully insured at my private practice and I'm a registered member of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP), you can find me on their register of counsellors. https://www.bacp.co.uk/search/Register.

I am also a member of The British Psychological Association (BPS)

I am originally trained as a Humanistic Person-Centred Counsellor, and it is part of my core practice to always approach every client with empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence. I also hold a bachelor's degree in Psychology. I believe that whether unconsciously or consciously, each one of us knows best what we need, and how we can achieve it. I have successfully used my skills and knowledge to help others to find this and become self-empowered. I believe that each and every one of us has innate capabilities of achieving the best version of ourselves and in my practice I always thrive for my clients to achieve the best of themselves and to overcome mental and emotional issues, to gain an improved self-steam and self-worth and to learn effective coping mechanism that will lead you to realise that you indeed can be in control of your wellbeing.

During my career, I have extensively expanded my counselling approaches, skills and knowledge and am now also highly experienced in CBT, Brief Solution Focus Therapy, Interpersonal Therapy, Transactional Analyses, Compassion Focus Therapy and NLP.

In my practice, I will always thrive for my clients to achieve the best of themselves. To overcome mental and emotional issues, and when is the case, accepting and managing the issues that can’t be overcome by therapeutic or any treatment, like chronic conditions, e.g. diabetes itself can’t be helped therapeutically, you will need to carry on with the medical treatment but complementary to it is possible to look at how your diagnosis made you feel, how the condition itself impacted on your capabilities to conduct a normal life, what are your fears and how it is hindering your emotional wellbeing, how has it impacted on your self-steam, self-believe and self-worth? Addressing such aspects will have a great impact on your mental and emotional wellbeing.

I work with adults that have issues brought on by broke-down relationships, loss, grief, mental health issues, personality disorders, learning difficulties and disabilities, depression, anxiety, anger, lack of motivation, substances misuse, peer pressure, bullying, academic pressure, parent’s divorce or separation amongst others.

Together we will explore each feeling and emotion event and behaviour, we find the core issue, the core challenge, and the hopes. We identify strengths already available and areas that the client believes that they could benefit from enhancing.

The aim is for the clients to feel self-empowered and in control. That is achieved by understanding and self-acceptance. Understanding our personal needs and limitations, discerning between limitations and self-limiting believes, understanding pain and development and believing and accepting that we are perfect as we are with no need for comparison is a good place to start. Once this is achieved change will start to take place and we will naturally drift towards a more positive and proactive future.

In an educational setting, I worked with children covering all aspects of their therapeutic needs. I also with teachers that needed support in all the mental and emotional issues of life plus the ones related to their pupils and the impact they have on their overall mental wellbeing.

I have also worked with parents that were supported by children services. I was able to help parents to understand their primal needs as human beings, spouses, parents and professionals. Often they felt conflicted and unsure on how to fulfil each role. We explored how to find understanding and acceptance of these roles and take positive and assertive steps to ensure a balance that will promote a healthy emotional and mental state by addressing all and any condition bred by this conflicting and challenging time.

In the prison service, I worked in substance misuse recovery where I had the opportunity to gain insight in what it is like to feel that you need the change but feel unable and incapable of promoting this. I was able to work with aspects of motivation, learned behaviours, chemical dependency, use of substances as a coping mechanism and anger management, belief of powerlessness over addiction, shame, guilt, trauma, and consequences. I am very experienced in working with addictive behaviour and have extensive knowledge and therapeutic skills and approaches that can help most people to stabilise and adopt a way of living free of substances.

I aim to provide a treatment that, in the end, the client will be able to accept the consequences of the past, while learning to cope with feelings that were often suppressed by substances misuse. Clients will have the opportunity to learn how to identify triggers and behaviours. Identifying which needs need to be fulfilled. We achieve this by looking into underlying issues, by addressing the trauma that led to addiction or caused by it, by challenging maladapted thought process, etc. I have also extensive knowledge of relapse prevention that can be incorporated in our sessions.

£60.00 per session