John Richard Shaw

My background

I have come to counselling and psychotherapy relatively late in life, both as a client and a practitioner.

To be frank, I dismissed for years any notion that psychotherapy could help or be of any relevance to me.

However, as I moved from being a civil and criminal defence lawyer to a mediator and hence became more aware of counselling practices, this began to change.

I embarked on training to become a counsellor and integrative psychotherapist and as part of this I had to have personal therapy myself.

As a result of all this I became aware of just what a source of help, relief, restoration and repair this could be and how much easier things could have been for me if I had only sought this help earlier.

I had managed down the years and had thought I had been doing well enough. But only later, when I became aware of the benefits to be gained, did I realise how much I wanted others not to miss out as I had.

How I work

I work naturally in a person centred way and my training in integrative psychotherapy has added to this. It has brought me into contact with many different approaches, some of which I feel especially drawn towards.

In training I worked with bereavement and life limiting illness together with the many conditions that express themselves more generally as anxiety and depression.

I have a particular interest in obsessive compulsive disorders and trauma and have undertaken additional trainings in these areas.

Personal experience has also helped me towards a better understanding of grief and other conditions.

Like many of my colleagues and fellow practitioners, I work from the premise that my task is to help clients to heal themselves, both through a better awareness and a new experience of themselves and others.

My charges

It is very important to me that all who need this help should be able to afford it. So as far as possible I try to accommodate this. At the same time it is right to value the work being done.

I offer a free initial conversation of up to 20 minutes, after which my standard charge applies for each 50 minute session. We can agree an initial number of sessions.

I prefer to work face to face where possible but will also provide telephone or zoom sessions.