Sarah Worley-James
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This professional is accepting new clients but may have a waitlist. Please enquire with them directly to discuss availability.
This professional is accepting new clients but may have a waitlist. Please enquire with them directly to discuss availability.
About me
I have over 25 years of experience as a fully qualified counsellor and supervisor, within the voluntary and public sectors, and in private practice. I qualified in online counselling in 2011, and am a Fellow, and former Chair, of ACTO (The Association for Counselling and Therapy Online).
I offer individual and couples therapy, both face to face and online; via email, instant messaging or webcam. Issues that I work with include identity, stress and anxiety, low self-esteem, relationship difficulties, bereavement and loss, trauma and abuse, anger management.
My counselling is based on a Humanistic-Existential approach, which recognises that we all need to find our own meaning and path in life. I focus on helping you develop your self-awareness, to understand how you relate to yourself and the world around you.
I work flexibly with the needs of the individual client, integrating appropriately from other counselling approaches; including Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. I use my training in Internal Family Systems to support you in recognising, accepting and integrating all parts of yourself.
I will work with you to identify your strengths, challenge unhelpful thinking cycles, connect to, and utilise, your inner resources to gain a deeper understanding of yourself and fresh perspectives. We will work together to help you develop new coping strategies and move forward in a more positive direction.
I find the use of imagery and metaphors powerful in helping you understand your emotions, as by focusing solely on spoken or written words, the individual meaning and experience of that feeling can be more difficult to describe and understand. Whereas a unique image can bring a tangibility and solidity to that emotion, helping you to find a new understand, and a different way to approach your difficulties.
Each client is, of course, unique, and it is important that I acknowledge and work with the diversity within our counselling relationship, as I aim to create a safe, non-judgemental, trusting therapeutic space. We will work collaboratively to help you express yourselves fully, and reflect on and explore your issues.
I will have a regular reviews with you, to enable you to reflect on the counselling process, and decide whether you have got everything you need from counselling, or whether you feel more sessions would help.
I also provide supervision, having supervised a mixture of student and qualified counsellors since 2003.
I provide sessions online or face to face from my home address in a room used exclusively for counselling, which I have tried to make as comfortable and relaxed an environment as possible.
Training, qualifications & experience
I originally qualified as a counsellor in 1999, completing my Masters in Counselling in 2006. I am a senior accredited counsellor and supervisor with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. I successfully passed the OCST Online Counselling course in 2011 and am a Fellow, member, and former Chair, of the Association for Counselling and Therapy Online Therapy.
My experience has been within both the voluntary and public sector, as well as in private practice since 2008. I have ten years experience in the substance misuse field and have delivered employee counselling since 2002. I am currently a senior counsellor in a higher education institution, having joined at the beginning of 2009; counselling both students and staff. In 2011 I set up the online counselling service there and continue to develop it.
I have been supervising counsellors since 2003, both those going through their counselling training and qualified, and have a diploma in Supervision from the Centre for Supervision and Team Development. I have an OCST qualification in online supervision. I am a Fellow and former Chair of ACTO (Association for Counselling and Therapy Online).
I have undertaken a wide range of CPD over the years to build on my core training in person-centred, psychodynamic and CBT approaches, including training in working with sexual abuse, solution-focused brief therapy, working with clients on the Autistic Spectrum, the Polyvagel theory and Rewind for working with trauma and Internal Family Systems.
I also have experience since 2002 of writing and delivering a range of workshops on substance misuse, and since 2009 on a range of issues including stress and anxiety, insomnia, perfectionism and anger management. I wrote and taught on a BACP accredited counselling diploma course for seven years and an introduction to counselling course for two years.
I am the author of Online Counselling, An essential guide (PCCS Books 2022), and contributed the BACP response to the COVID pandemic, supporting counsellors moving to work online. I had a regular column, Cyberwork, in the BACP Workplace journal, for a number of years, which I have now handed over to a fresh voice, and written other articles and blogs about online counselling and self-care.
My writing is now moving more towards a focus on neurodivergence, a long-held interest that has been enhanced by my recent diagnosis as having ADHD.
Member organisations
school Registered / Accredited
Being registered/accredited with a professional body means an individual must have achieved a substantial level of training and experience approved by their member organisation.
The Association for Counselling and Therapy Online
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
£80.00 - £110.00
Concessions offered for
Additional information
The initial consultation is half price (£40) to allow you the opportunity to decide whether I am the right counsellor for you, and for us to decide what you want to focus on and get from your counselling. Thereafter I charge £80 for individual sessions, £110 for couples' work.
If you need to cancel, please (unless it is an emergency) give me 24 hours notice, otherwise, I will need to charge half the fee for your session.
For supervision, I charge £50 for student counsellors and £80 for qualified counsellors for an hour's supervision. For an hour and a half's supervision £70 (students) and £100 (qualified).
When I work
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