Sonja Hookway

Whatever brings you here - welcome! I am an integrative psychotherapist registered with UKCP (United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy) & Senior Accredited Member of the National Counselling Society. With twenty five years experience in wellbeing and mental health fields, I have a warm and effective approach which has been helpful for people with a wide range of life problems. I can help with stress, anxiety, panic disorder, depression, self harm, eating disorders, post-traumatic conditions, O.C.D, personality adaptation, post Adoption issues and relationship difficulties alongside the wide range of life issues of diagnosis that clients bring.

You may have been wondering whether psychotherapy or counselling could support you resolve the issues you face for a long time - or made a recent decision to find out who is available to help you in your local area. However long it takes, the process of getting from the initial thought to walking into a therapy room is quite a journey for anyone! Often it can feel difficult to figure out what to look for - how to get a sense of someone to have conversations that may feel difficult or overwhelming before contacting them - or how to check someone actually has the experience and qualifications to help you. Whatever has brought you this far, I hope this site will give you helpful information to help you move along your journey.

My practice is centrally located in Swansea, within easy reach of Port Talbot, Carmarthen, Bridgend and Neath.
I hold full insurance and I work within the UKCP code of Ethics.

Integrative psychotherapy and counselling combine the strengths of a range of psychological therapies. The flexibility and creativity of this approach made sense for me as a practitioner. My openness to new challenges has supported my recent transition into working online through Zoom as my preferred platform. My clients and I have been warmly surprised by the experience of working in the digital realm. We agree that my trauma informed, somatic & mindfulness based practice works well 'through the Zoom window'.

What this means for you as a client is that I have a depth of training that allows me to use approaches that feel best suited to your unique experience. Our initial meeting will help clarify what you would like to explore or change in therapy, and whether a counselling or psychotherapy approach is best for you. Counselling works well for the more specific problems in life; psychotherapy tends to be longer term and works with the deeper patterns that you may notice affecting you over time. I work with clients on both short term and longer term basis.

When we agree to work together, I will offer weekly 50 minute sessions, with the first 6 sessions usually forming the assessment for psychotherapy, and/or aiming to address specific immediate concerns - for example, managing acute anxiety. You may be may be more or less interested in the nuts and bolts of my tool-kit, 'how I do what I do' - and what this means for us working together. This doesn't much matter.

What does matter is whether we can get along and find common ground of trust to explore what it is that brings you to therapy. You may be very clear and have a specific problem that you hope to resolve. You may just feel rather unhappy or dissatisfied in your life and feel motivated to discover why, and how this can change.

I charge £55 per weekly 50 minute session. I have run two weekly 'at cost' places on a donations basis since 2012 and intend to continue this practice. Please feel free to discuss whether one is available and suitable for you when we meet.

• Worked as Mental Health Adviser for the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David until 2015.
• Previously Mental Health Coordinator at Swansea University for 8 years. Completed a therapy placement at Swansea University in the Wellbeing department 2011 and completed a second placement with Y Cwmni Siarad (The Talking Company) in 2012
• Co-facilitated the 8 week Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course (2012)
• Delivered mental health awareness training in a range of settings since 1997 and individual psycho-educational sessions.
• Worked as a mental health advocate across a range of inpatient units across South Wales from 2001-6.
• Other varied experience in specialist mental health housing support & user participation projects (1990s)
• Passed the MITI assessment (Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity) -2012- in order to work for the WILMA research project for the NHS and Cardiff University as a Motivational Interviewer. This is an additional and effective short term approach that many people find useful to support their motivation and ability to change difficult habitual behaviours.
• Research interest in working therapeutically with people who experience psychosis, particularly phase specific interventions.
• Lead contributor to the development of Digital & Social Policy for Welsh Psychotherapy Partnership and have ongoing research interests in this area.
• Delivered training on the Ethics of Digital and Social Media use for student psychotherapists at WPP (2016).
• Previously Co-director of CARP collaborations - a Wales based social enterprise building community capacity and cohesion.