Stephen Little

I offer psychotherapeutic counselling in Croydon and Hackney and also specialise in bereavement, grief, loss, and spirituality.

If you're looking for a friendly, professional psychotherapeutic counsellor with whom to explore and make sense of your experience then please contact me to arrange a free introductory session. 

My approach is Gestalt, which means that I will work actively with you to explore your awareness of what's needed and possible in your life. I see clients at Space to be You in Hackney, E8 and Care to Listen, Croydon, CR0.

Living your life after bereavement

Bereavement can be a bewildering experience that can leave you feeling lost, alone, shattered, stuck, numb, no longer yourself, fearful of being a burden to others, and feeling unstable or unfamiliar to yourself. Your sleep, eating, concentration and memory might be disrupted. You might have lost touch with happier times, good memories, and hope. Meanwhile, other people might be encouraging you to move on and 'put it behind you' or might not seem to really want to understand or talk about what you’re going through. You might be feeling overwhelmed by emotion, out of control, or unable to think and plan, especially if you suddenly have new responsibilities. Your normal ways of coping might not feel like enough right now. As well as the death, there might be aspects of your relationship with the person who has died which need to be grieved. 

By exploring your experience with me you can begin to find ways of responding to your bereavement that you can feel happier about (including important and meaningful ways to feel connected to what was best about the person who has died and your relationship with them). This might include making sense of your loss, understanding your thoughts, feelings and behaviour in context, identifying what you need or want to do, and committing to look after yourself in a kind and understanding way. This is all the more important if you have experienced things during bereavement that might not seem normal and which other people don't want to hear about. I offer a non-judgmental relationship in which all aspects of your experience can be honored and explored in terms of what they mean for you and your life.  

Coming to terms with death from substance abuse and suicide

The death of a friend or relative can be more difficult to come to terms with when aspects of their life, or your relationship with them, where also difficult to come to terms with. This can be all the more challenging and distressing when someone has died as a result of abusing a substance, such as alcohol or heroin, or has died by suicide. It can be perplexing not understanding why someone would persist in such harmful behaviour or was so unreachable in their pain. 

Deaths arising from substance abuse and suicide can leave a swarm of painful, unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable, questions. Why did they do that? Did they really intend to die? Could they have stopped if they really cared? Could I have done more? Friends and family might avoid talking to you about the death, or say well-meaning but unhelpful things, or want to blame and shame. All this can be infuriating and isolating. Anger, judgment, shame and blame can make grieving even more challenging and can leave us feeling all the more frightening of our emotions and prone to unhelpful self-accusation. 

I offer you a safe and non-judgmental relationship in which to explore all this at a pace that feels right for you.

Exploring loss and change

Loss and change can be challenging to work through. This applies to any significant loss, for example of a job or career, romantic relationship or friendship, health, status, expectations of the future, or creative inspiration. Even loss of illusions can be a very unwelcome experience when those illusions have served an important purpose in our life. We are desiring beings and losing what we desire can lead to grief, and to anger, and to shame - especially if we believe we've lost what we desire because of fear.

Buddhist teacher Trungpa said that disappointment can be the beginning of enlightenment. All loss and change can be opportunities to step into new awareness. Simply starting where you are by exploring with me how you're affected by loss and change, and how you can best support yourself, can lead to new understandings about what is - and isn't - important, needed or desirable in your life right now. 

Integrating spiritual, transformative and non-ordinary experiences

Non-ordinary experiences, such as near-death experience for instance, can be both positively transformative and also highly disruptive. It can take time and patience to work through the significance of such experiences and integrate them into how you live. It has taken me over 10 years to integrate an out of body experience that happened during a Holotropic breathwork retreat. Existing relationships and other long-term commitments might become more complicated as a result of such experiences.

In my experience all the great religious and wisdom traditions emerge from direct experience of that which is most real. The fruit of all religious and spiritual experience is practical and includes greater openness to, and capacity for, loving kindness and wisdom. This often manifests very simply as increased care and kindness in everyday life and greater trust in the face of uncertainty and suffering. This can include reduced fear of death and dying. In my experience, the hallmark of the spiritual is that it takes care of both the psychological and physical needs of persons and communities.

I work with people of all religious and spiritual traditions, and none, to explore questions of 'who am I?' and 'how should I be in the world?' and 'what do I serve?' This includes those who feel something fundamental is lacking in their lives at the moment, who are questioning their place in a particular faith tradition, and those who have had non-ordinary experiences, whether spontaneously or as a result of spiritual practices.  

Finding your way through anxiety and depression

Anxiety and depression can leave you stuck in a too-familiar landscape in which you feel unsafe - either painfully mobilised by anxiety, or heavily sucked down into depression. With me you can explore this landscape, including how it is shaped by, and shapes, your bodily experience, thoughts feelings, behaviours and relationships. Exploring can lead to new awareness, and making sense of your situation, in ways that support your satisfaction and growth. 

Getting clearer about what you need, value and do in the world

Just like rooms, our lives can get cluttered with stuff over the years so that a living room can end up feeling more like a store room, or strangely empty. Counselling can be a useful, safe, private and exploratory way to reflect on your life, clarify your priorities, and find new excitement. In counselling you might identify attitudes and behaviours that simply don’t fit you anymore, or interests, pleasures and abilities that you’d forgotten about. You might feel ready for something new but not quite know what that is yet or how others in your life might respond. Counselling can help you clarify priorities and move ahead (or stay right where you are if this is what you choose!) with a clearer sense of your needs, purpose, values and commitments. 

I charge £60-£70 for a session and also offer a concessionary rate of £45 upwards per session for those on lower incomes.