Simon Dix

Hello to you, my anxious / troubled / neurodivergent reader. Welcome.

Before I begin my rambling intro, I need to highlight that I now offer 10 appointments per week at between 50% and 90% reduction in fee, but still up to 90 minutes duration, for low-income ND young people, via my CIC: Affordable ND Counselling CIC Ltd. You are free to choose your own payment level, based on your financial situation at the time. There isn't any discussion about how much you pay each week, that's your business. As long as it's between the 2 percentages obviously.

The CIC came about because I realised that a significant number of ND young people are effectively excluded from being able to access any professional counselling at all, because public sector provision is inadequate, and the private sector too expensive. 

Since becoming strongly motivated by witnessing unfairness is one of my own ND traits, the CIC was fully created within weeks of having the idea.

So now there is a third option, for any local neurodivergent young people who are struggling to find any effective outlet for the millions of things racing around their minds, or for the One Enormous Thing which is currently dominating their outlook.

There's an enquiry form on its website: www.affordablendc.co.uk 

To create the perfect counselling environment, I channelled over 50 years of living with the side effects of undiagnosed AUDHD into designing exactly the kind of relaxing, understanding, supportive and stress-free counselling set-up that I wish I had been able to experience in my formative years.

The office itself is a lovely, calming place to be, with plenty plants, interesting chairs and LOADS of things to fiddle or draw with. 

It's a dedicated counselling room 24/7, in a charming old Georgian building with free parking, in an anonymous and pleasant neighbourhood. As one client put it: 'It looks haunted.'

COSCA (Confederation of Scottish Counselling Agencies) allows both rented offices and domestic homes to be used for private practice counselling. But because I reckon that a vast majority of my client base are likely to feel uncomfortable if required to go to a complete stranger's house, especially after having been told from birth never to do that, I opted for a professional, rented office instead.

That doesn't mean it's not a warm, friendly and safe space to go to for counselling: quite the opposite. It just means you're not having to deal with going to, and being inside, a stranger's house. With all which that entails. Most notably the potential presence of mildly alarming dogs; or cats; or relatives; as would be the case if I ran my practice from home.

I work across all 7 days, between 11.59am and 11.59pm. But I never have more than 12 sessions per week, because I'm not one of these people who can see 6 or 7 clients a day, one after the other, and still guarantee focussed, mentally alert, carefully tailored sessions.

My Brain would go on strike if I tried. I need to be able to connect to your descriptions of what you experience, using your perspective, to really understand what you're going through. And that takes a particular kind of mental agility. Of which I simply don't have a limitless supply anymore. 90-odd minutes, two times a day, is about my ceiling. 

There are no forms to fill in, no contracts to sign, no minimum number of sessions to agree to, literally no pressure involved at all. Because pressure leads to stress, and we all have enough of that to deal with already. That and anxiety, because the world seems designed to cause plenty of that too.

You can just come in, sit comfy, and describe and work things out. In your own time.

If I'd had any therapy at all as a young person, anything really to help me to begin to actually understand myself and how I might manage to function successfully in neurotypical society without feeling stretched to breaking point all the time, I'm certain life would've been immeasurably easier. I might not have tried quite so hard, for instance, to drink my autism to death in my teens, after learning that alcohol abuse kills brain cells and deciding that it was worth the risk to the good bits of my brain, to attempt to kill off some of the ones which made me different and awkward and anxious. A dangerous misunderstanding which could easily have been avoided if I'd felt able to discuss it with anyone. Didn't even know it was autism back then, let alone autism mixed with adhd. I just longed to be less different; more anonymous, identical to the herd, safe.

It is the great potential for positive change at an impressionable life stage which motivates me to provide the sort of counselling service that I do, driven by the simple desire to Help, which is another of my major traits. 

And having someone who is guaranteed to listen to your point of view and see your side of the story can be an enormous help, particularly if you're feeling generally nervous or lacking in self-confidence. It can be a starting point for a change of perspective, or an increased understanding of relative importance, or for being able to put something discordant in the back of your mind to rest.

Another common trait is a stubborn insistence on never seeking assistance unless I physically cannot do The Thing myself, to my own specific plans. Therefore, from fitting out the office to website design, I painstakingly puzzled everything out on my own.

'Would I look forward to my weekly therapy appointment if it meant coming to this location, this room; this decor and atmosphere; this (incredibly relaxing) egg chair?'

'Would I want to walk along a bustling town centre street, to potentially have to sit in a Waiting Room, with Other People, before my appointment?.. Or very much not that?..'

'What times/days would I want a counsellor to be available?'

'Would I prefer to be told where to sit, and what I may or may not pick up and fiddle with? Or feel free to sit wherever, and have complete freedom of choice over whether to Playdoh or paint dinosaur fractals this week?'

'Do I agree with having to pay cancellation fees if I don't manage to make my appointment?'

'Do I prefer to be able to change my appointment times or days to suit me better, as and when I need, often because I straight forgot?'

'Do I love plants, and ideally need all rooms to have plants in?'

I also suffer from a dogged refusal to ever blandly copy other people's ideas. Everything must be authentic and original, two things sadly often lacking in the neurotypical realm. And everything must be designed to appeal to a neurodivergent brain. Except when my own ND brain decides that the range of potential neurodiversity which may encounter the website is too vast to possibly aim effectively at the entirety of, and defaults to rambling, as has happened here. (More traits: over-sharing, and thread loss due to uncontrollably expanding complexity)

My website is unlike anybody else's you've ever seen (please only use mobile view because that works perfectly, unlike the desktop formatting which just does whatever it wants and knows I'm too scared of mucking up the mobile formatting to attempt to rectify it).

My counselling room design also does not conform to the standard, 2-facing-armchairs-and-a-tiny-table norm; and what I'm writing here doesn't sound anything like all of the standard blurbs you have had to spend many torturous minutes wading through, in your search for a counsellor you like the sound of. With that in mind, on to the next section...

The standard fee is £50 for 90 minutes, because the 50 minute therapeutic hour is never long enough for my tribe. But I have 10 slots per week solely available to those for whom a lack of disposable income is preventing access to help. 

I run a low-cost counselling CIC, which provides sessions from £5 to £25. It has it's own website, for regulatory purposes, at www.affordablendc.co.uk 

Because of the CIC aspect, these ten clients do occasionally need to fill in feedback forms, in order for funding bodies to have some tangible evidence that their money is having a positive effect on the 'Low-income, young ND people' demographic. But I have tried to make these as pain and hassle-free as possible.

I don't charge for cancellations and missed appointments (within reason), and a degree of lateness is absolutely not a problem. If I didn't understand these things what sort of a neurodivergent-supportive counsellor would I be? :D 

Free 30 minute chat or visit available, if you require this before committing to any actual counselling sessions, so you can meet me / experience the room, then go away and think about it.

Everything about my set-up is designed to be as easy and un-pressured as possible, so if you find anything at all to be even slightly unclear, confusing or worrying, please do let me know and I'll attempt to resolve whatever it is.

I generally only offer 2 appointments per day, and no more than 12 per week. This ensures that all of my clients always receive the same level of carefully tailored attention. 

Please see my website for my gigantic explanation of my counselling practice, or email me or text ( 07407 247070 ) if you've had enough of wading through counselling blurbs and just want to communicate. I will always respond, because autism, but not necessarily immediately, because adhd...