Tony Williams

Accessible Psychotherapy in Kingston Upon Thames

So you’re looking for a counsellor
Maybe you’re thinking and feeling things you don’t want to think or feel. Or maybe feeling nothing at all. Perhaps things keep going wrong; or perhaps nothing changes. It could be you feel you can’t cope. Or something has just come and hit you for six. Counselling is a safe place to explore things like that. It’s a place with the potential for personal change.

Who am I?
My name is Tony Williams, and I am a counsellor working in central and North Kingston Upon Thames.

How does counselling work?
Fortunately, we humans can change our minds. Literally. A fancy word for this is plasticity. Even more, we are designed to change in each other’s company. It’s how humans learn to fit in. So we make a new relationship, you and I. In doing that, we are already making a vehicle for change. What’s the fuel for that vehicle? Well, you bring that. It’s your experiences, your thoughts, your feelings. And as we move along together, change can start to happen.

How do we work together?
Everything we do is a collaboration. Everything we do is for your benefit. We make choices; where you want to go; how fast; how much challenge do you want? How much support? When do you feel the work is done?

What do you pay me for?
My job is to hear you; not judge you; and to try to understand your experience, perhaps in great detail; to help you to reflect; to help you shape your journey; and to be available for you, throughout, with a safe place. Especially when it is most difficult.

Why me?
I’m a fully qualified Integrative-Relational counsellor; and an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP(Accred)). That means I can draw on a mixture of theory and practice developed over the last 150 years or so; and that I am bound by a code of ethics in how I work with you. It means I meet the right standards in competence and integrity. More than that, though, I am committed to making the extra step to meet you in the way you want to be met; where, when and recognising your individual needs.

What is Integrative-Relational Counselling?
Integrative-Relational Counselling integrates various theories and practices in counselling and psychotherapy to give a holistic approach to helping people.  Principally it includes:

Psychodynamic counselling: how our early lives affect us, how we learn to be in relationship to other people and how we view the world; and how those early experiences determine our way of being in later life.

Humanistic counselling:  how we all have inbuilt drives to grow and achieve our potential; and how obstructions to these drives can cause us unhappiness and distress.

It also includes an understanding of Transpersonal (spiritual) and Cognitive-Behavioural (how our behaviours shape our thinking).

These theories and practices are combined with a focus on the relationship between counsellor and client and how this can mirror the client’s experiences in the world outside the counselling room.

So an Integrative-Relational Counsellor is equipped with a full set of tools to help you, whether your issues stem from the past, frustration with the future, or are in the now.

Accessibility means meeting your needs

I offer 1-2-1 counselling for adults; long (open ended) and short term (as little as 6 weeks).

My counselling offer is to meet you for 1 x 50 minute session per week at the following locations:-

• Siddeley House, 50, Canbury Park Road, KT2 6LX – fully accessible - £60/session
• Park Road surgery (behind Spinaljoint, 157, Park Road, KT2 6DQ) – NOT wheelchair accessible – £60/session;
• Kingston Quaker Centre – Fairfield East, KT1 2PT – fully accessible – £70/session
• Your home £Neg;
• The internet via Zoom £50/session;

I do not provide low cost counselling; but I do volunteer 1 day per week with RELEASE at the YMCA in Surbiton, which provides negotiable rates starting from £25 based on means. The YMCA is wheelchair accessible.

I also lead therapeutic walks in Richmond Park. Put the cost of your first session against a pair of walking boots instead of paying me.

In addition to my work as a counsellor I have worked extensively with people suffering with serious mental illness, people with neurodiverse conditions, and people in recovery from substance misuse and the effects of homelessness.

I am a Time to Change Champion (Time to Change seeks to address stigma and discrimination in relation to mental health).

I am a Connected Kingston Champion (Connected Kingston is Kingston's social prescribing initiative. Social prescribing involves using social solutions, such as walking groups, sport, and the creative arts, to complement other clinical forms of prescribing, such as prescription drugs).

I have lived in Kingston all my life and I am very connected to it as a place.