Chris O'Malley

Compassion, safety, respect and honesty are the principles of my long-established confidential psychotherapy counselling and supervision practice. I’ve particular experience and success in working with abuse, shame, low self-esteem, anger-management, stress, anxiety and depression but have knowledge and experience in all areas. I’ve also an interest in working with difference and diversity (including sexuality) and my work is clinically supervised by a leading expert in my field. While I’ve developed expertise in my field, our mutual humanity is paramount for me and, while I’m generally experienced as insightful, supportive and challenging, I’m also seen as having a gentle sense of humour and a balanced viewpoint.

More about Me

Hello, my name is Chris and I’m glad you’re considering choosing me as your therapist -an important choice as research shows the quality of the relationship the therapist can build with his client is the biggest predictor of a good outcome for therapy. I’ve worked with people all my life in the public sector and caring professions and bring my skill set to building good relationships.

I don’t come with a set of expectations about you and appreciate that coming to therapy can be daunting and take time to settle into. After an initial mutual assessment session where you can get a flavour of my style and the sort of interventions I make, we can agree whether or not to work with each other and then how to go ahead. I’ve had years of personal therapy myself in order to ensure I know what the experience for clients is like and to guarantee that any issues I’ve had are not going to get in the way of supporting you.

Over 20 years of practising I have sought to integrate my lifelong interest in health, wellbeing and healing; my personal experience along with aspects of philosophy, psychology and clinical theory. I’m constantly developing my interest in therapy and have written around clinical themes for professional journals.  I bring my experience from working in education and music as well as influences from Buddhism. I’m an MSc qualified psychotherapist (registered with UKCP), accredited counsellor (registered with BACP) and supervisor with much diverse experience. I’ve worked privately, within the NHS, with staff in a University setting (where I also taught Mindfulness) and as a therapist for serving officers in for West Midlands Police. All of these influences and experiences give me confidence in my work which is clinically evaluated in supervision. My clients also express a high degree of satisfaction with my work. I’m a Supervising Member of the Gestalt Psychotherapy Training institute and as such a senior member of the gestalt community.

My core modality is gestalt, a creative, holistic approach which supports working at depth with the therapeutic relationship and embodied process and includes uncovering the influence of past and present situations on current difficulties. I’m sensitive to cultural differences and individual preferences and aim to help clients in developing enough support and awareness to grow into the choices and changes which, outside of therapy, have proved elusive.

I offer long and short-term therapy and personal development work to individuals. I also offer clinical supervision from a pan-Humanistic perspective to students of local universities and to qualified professionals. I have provided Team-Building consultancy and CPD workshops for practitioners and welcome contact with regard to this.

Please note that my B14 address is an optional alternative applying only to Supervisees.

I am interested in spiritual -though not specifically religious- perspectives and also offer mindfulness methods as a method of calming the mind and finding peace from negative thoughts and mental habits.

I have experience as a teacher and musician and recognise that I may have knowledge and understanding that could be supportive when working with people from those backgrounds.

I like reading, films, exercise and playing music.

My fee for a 50 minute individual session is £65 (some concessions may be available). This reflects my level of training and qualification as both a psychotherapist and a counsellor.

For Supervision my fee is £60 per hour (£50 for students).

My Commitment

I ‘m passionate about the effectiveness of GestaltCounselling and Psychotherapy and commit myself to being to be the best therapist I can through my regular clinical supervision and having undergone considerable Gestalt Psychotherapy myself in order to make sure I have no ‘blind spots’ and to understand therapy from a client’s point of view. I take care to evaluate my work and have had many successes and appreciations which supports my confidence in what I do.

• I’m mature with lots of life experience including in teaching, in music, and with spiritual practice. I like people and like learning from them as well as helping them learn.

• I seek to integrate my life and work: clients I’ve worked with often find me very authentic in the therapy to the benefit of the outcome. I’ve been described as spontaneous, compassionate and challenging.

For further information please contact me either by phone or email.

To arrange an appointment please telephone or text me. If I am not immediately available, please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as I can.