Sinead Baulk

Integrative Counsellor | The Eden Practice

Finding a counsellor can feel surprisingly difficult. There are qualifications, different therapeutic approaches and hundreds of profiles telling you what counselling is supposed to feel like. Ultimately, though, you are choosing a person to work with.

I am an Integrative Counsellor at The Eden Practice, offering counselling to adults both in person and online.

I work integratively because people are different. The same experience can affect two people in completely different ways, and what is helpful for one person may be entirely wrong for another. Rather than approaching you with a predetermined explanation, I want to understand your experience from your perspective.

How I work

My style is engaged, thoughtful and collaborative.

I listen, but I don't believe counselling has to mean you talk for fifty minutes while I occasionally nod. Where appropriate, I will ask questions, notice patterns, offer observations, and think alongside you about what might be happening.

Sometimes that involves looking at the past. Sometimes what matters most is what is happening in your life now. Often the two overlap.

As an integrative counsellor, I can draw upon different therapeutic ideas and ways of working depending on what we are exploring. I am interested in the whole person rather than reducing somebody to a diagnosis, difficulty or single event in their life.

You may be looking for support with anxiety, trauma, low mood, bereavement, relationships, self-esteem, difficult life experiences or periods of change. Equally, you may not have a name for what is happening. Sometimes people come to counselling because they know they aren't happy with something and want the opportunity to understand it better.

That is enough to start with.

Trauma-informed practice and experience

I have experience working with SARAC (Sexual Abuse Rape Advice Centre), supporting people affected by sexual abuse and rape, and I continue my connection with the organisation.

I am also currently undertaking a Master's degree with a trauma-informed Practice, continuing to develop my knowledge alongside clinical practice.

Trauma-informed working does not mean I will view everything through the lens of trauma. It means I bring an awareness of the many ways experiences can affect people while remaining interested in what those experiences mean to you individually.

My academic work also reflects my interest in the therapeutic relationship. My undergraduate independent research explored relational safety and the experience of being seen within counselling, examining and questioning established therapeutic theory.

That research strengthened something I value in practice: remaining curious. Theory can give us useful ways of understanding human experience, but no theory can tell me who the person sitting opposite me is.

A counselling relationship that involves both of us…

Counselling can be serious, but it doesn't have to feel clinical or unnatural.

There can be room for conversation, reflection, challenge, silence and even humour. You are still yourself when you walk into a counselling room, and I am still a person sitting opposite you.

I won't tell you how to live your life or make decisions for you. What I can offer is a professional relationship in which we can look properly at what is happening, including the things that can be difficult to see when you're in the middle of them.

The aim isn't to turn you into somebody else.

It is to help you understand yourself, your circumstances and your choices more clearly, and to consider what you want to do with that understanding.

The Eden Practice

I offer face-to-face sessions from a private garden therapy room at The Eden Practice, providing a comfortable and discreet setting separate from a formal clinical environment.

I also offer online counselling via:

• Zoom
• WhatsApp video
• FaceTime
• I offer a free 20-minute consultation before you decide whether you would like to book a counselling session.

It is simply a chance for us to talk, for you to ask questions and for us to see whether I might be the right counsellor for you.

You don't need to know exactly what you need from counselling. We can work that out together.

• Concessions offered for
• Low income
• Keyworkers
• OAPs
• Students
• Trainee counsellors
• Unemployed