Individual psychotherapy and relationship therapy Bristol
I’ve been a therapist for 25 years and beyond that been a seeker my entire life. On that journey I’ve explored very many methods of personal development and meditation. Based on that lifetime of experience I’ve come to a conclusion about the secret of therapeutic healing, and that is what I base my work on. It’s simple. I really believe the best in people.
I have a trust that the wellsprings of love and strength, of action and of acceptance, are present in everyone. They don’t fundamentally need to be created; they basically need to be recognised, affirmed, and believed in.
Our painful feelings, our negative beliefs, are powerful. But from the viewpoint of meditation, these are at root bad dreams. Convincing bad dreams; but not truths of our basic nature. Behind those bad dreams our essence qualities remains intact.
Intact, yes, but commonly our buried essence qualities are also scared of attack, scorn, rejection, compulsion; very afraid they will be unlovable. Therapy has to meet these hurt parts gently. To come alive again, these qualities need above all to feel safe.
Of course this journey may take time, with confronting truths to be faced and at times major changes to make. But I have the same trust that everyone has as essence qualities the courage, honesty and self-trust to go on that journey and deal with those realities.
The How I Work section explains what in my experience creates psychotherapeutic healing. The Resources section has explanations of some of the therapy methods I use or have learned from, some self-help resources, and a few lighthearted things.
Individual psychotherapy in Bristol for issues including
Depressed ● Feeling anxious ● Part of life isn’t working ● Feeling no good / not enough ● Recurrently unhappy ● Trauma ● Conflict with your family ● Painful loss ● Feeling an imposter ● Fearing rejection ● Feeling lost ● Your life feels meaningless ● Divorce/separation ● Can’t find your next step ● Can’t make your next step ● Being a parent ● In a major transition ● Fear of being alone ● Negative thinking you can’t stop ● You feel you can’t cope ● Conflicts with your partner ● Repeating relationship patterns ● Painful breakup ● Feeling shame ● Blocked by fear ● Can’t say No ● You are overwhelmed ● Something’s wrong but you can’t put into words what it is ● You just need to talk to someone without being judged
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
– Buddha
Couples therapy and relationship counselling in Bristol for issues including
Can’t communicate ● Fights repeat like a video loop ● Lack of emotional connection ● Can’t face the past ● Can’t let go of the past ● Infidelity ● Loss of trust ● Unbalanced workloads ● Need to be alone but then your partner feels abandoned ● Need to be close but partner focuses on things they do alone ● Anger – yours, your partner’s or both ● Words that wound ● Either avoid difficult conversation or insist difficult conversations happen right now ● Afraid of having needs ● Afraid of expressing needs ● Unable to recognise needs ● Resentment over support with young children ● Afraid/unable to set boundaries ● Saying Yes when you’d rather say No ● Not feeling a team ● Your contribution isn’t valued ● Blame ● The other person making you responsible for their hurt, or you them ● Saying wounding things ● Lack of sexual intimacy ● One person not getting their sexual needs met ● Power struggles ● Feeling emotionally powerless ● Different views of parenting ● Jealousy ● Feeling unworthy ● Feeling unlovable ● Unsure about the future ● Coping with major life events including illness ● Stress from having toddlers (common) ● Stress from doing a house conversion (also common!) ● Simply cannot understand each other
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain
Practical FAQs. For therapeutic FAQs, see the individual and relationship headline pages.
These are practical questions about office hours etc. For many other questions clients ask me about the work, please see the headline therapy pages.Half-hour preliminary meeting: Both for individuals and couples, there’s no charge and no obligation. Please contact me here to arrange one.
For individual therapy: The first session is two hours, £140-00. All subsequent sessions are one and a half hours, £105-00. The time in between is up to you, and most people choose three or four weeks.
For couples: Length of sessions is the same as for individuals. The first session is two hours, £210. Subsequent sessions are 1.5 hours, £155.
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- The time between sessions is up to you and is not meant to be weekly. Mostly people choose three or four weeks.
- There is no commitment to a fixed number of sessions.
- Fees are payable before each session by bank transfer ie by phone banking. I don’t take credit cards.
For both couples and individuals, the first session is 2 hours, and the rest are 1.5 hours.
I offer a free choice of time between sessions, and mostly people choose three or four weeks. That’s subject to availability; if booking from one session to the next, I can’t guarantee the preferred time will be free. However we can work round this and ensure the preferred time by pencilling in two or three sessions ahead.
Payment is by BACS ie mobile banking, session by session, in advance of the appointment.
My office hours are:
Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday – closed.
Subject to availability, possible appointment hours are:
11:30-1:00 on Tuesday and Thursday (but not Wednesday)
2:30 – 4:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
4:30 – 6:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
7:00-8:30 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
To fit in the first, 2-hour, appointment I extend these hours like this: the three daytime slots start half and hour earlier, and the evening slot ends half an hour later (ie 7:00 – 9:00 pm.)
No, you can choose any day/time that works, subject to availability.
My office is 7, Unity St BS1 5HH. This is the road at the bottom of Park St directly opposite College Green with a pizza place on the left hand corner and a Cafe Restore on the right hand corner. If you’re driving, the low-level exit from Trenchard St is only a couple of hundred yards away.
No matter what anyone says, in working online a subtle something is lost that matters for true connection, understanding, and healing. With some clients I’ve done a mixture of in-person and online, and both myself and the people involved felt more effectiveness working face to face.
I’m happy to do a mixture of in-person and online, and please ask. Even then, sessions where myself and the two people of a couple are in three different locations are a waste of time. I don’t do these at all.
There’s easy parking in Trenchard St multistorey. The low-level exit is only a couple of hundred yards walk from my office.
There are bike racks in the street, and you can also bring the bike up a few steps into the downstairs lobby.
Get Started with a Free Introductory Meeting
Get in touch →Useful resources
Snuggle up, talk about films, save your marriage
This is a fun, easy but deep, research-validated couples self-help exercise to bring you and…
The barefoot stress counsellor: a solution-oriented self-help tool
This is a good self-help technique which is different and effective. Its a series of…
The Red Flag couples self-help exercise
If you both do it, the Red Flag exercise can cut through fights and save…
Test FAQ colours Home page
Test FAQ colours Home pageNo, you can choose any day/time that works, subject to availability.
My therapy model is a burst of sessions, rather than long term continuing. Roughly half of individual clients come for 5 – 10 sessions and roughly half of couples come for 4 – 8 sessions. You should get a sense of how things are going after the first couple of sessions. A few individuals do come for longer, some for a dozen or a few up to 20 or 24 sessions.
It goes without saying I don’t mean that all or any problems can be healed in that time. Rather, my model is to turn the corner which life is inviting you to turn in the present moment. That could be a huge or a small corner. There may or may not be other corners to turn in the future.
There’s no commitment to any fixed number of sessions. You get a free choice of time between sessions, and most people choose three or four weeks, or sometimes fortnightly just to start off with (all subject to my diary).
Prior to starting we have a half hour initial meeting. There is no charge for this and no obligation. Please contact me here to arrange one.