Our counselling approaches
Person-centred. Humanistic. Integrative. TA. CBT. Psychodynamic. Gestalt. Therapy does love a name. But you don’t need to know your CBT from your TA before you start counselling. That’s our job.
This is simply a guide to some of the approaches our counsellors use - minus the jargon and in actual human language.
Person-centred counselling
Your space. Your pace. Your stuff.
Person-centred counselling starts with a simple idea: you know you better than anyone else does.
Your counsellor won’t tell you what to do or decide what you should be feeling. Instead, they’ll listen — properly — and give you the space to talk, think, feel, change direction and work things out in your own way.
You don’t need an agenda. You don’t even need to know where to start. Sometimes saying “I have absolutely no idea what to talk about today” is exactly where you start.
Might suit you if:
- You want space to talk without lots of direction.
- Feeling heard and understood really matters to you.
- You want to make sense of things in your own time.
- You’re looking for a gentler, more reflective way of working.
Humanistic counselling
All of you is welcome here
Humanistic counselling is interested in you, not just the thing that’s brought you to therapy.
Your history. Your relationships. Your values. The person you’ve become. The person you might be trying to become. And all the complicated stuff in between.
Rather than asking “what’s wrong with you?”, the work is much more curious about what’s happened, what you’ve needed and what matters to you now.
Might suit you if:
- You want to understand yourself more deeply.
- You want therapy to feel warm, relational and human.
- You’re interested in growth, not just getting rid of symptoms.
- You want space to work out what you actually want.
CBT
When your thoughts have a lot to say
CBT — Cognitive Behavioural Therapy — looks at how your thoughts, feelings and behaviours can get tangled up together.
It’s generally a bit more structured and practical. You and your counsellor might look at a particular situation, notice the thoughts that show up around it and explore whether doing or thinking something differently changes what happens next.
There may even be things to try between sessions. Yes, therapy homework is a thing.
Might suit you if:
- You like practical tools and strategies.
- Anxiety, stress or low mood is getting in the way.
- You notice yourself getting caught in the same thought loops.
- You prefer a little more structure and focus.
Transactional Analysis (TA)
Why do I keep doing that?
Ever left a conversation thinking, Why did I react like that?
Or promised yourself you wouldn’t get pulled into the same old argument… and then somehow found yourself right back there?
TA gets curious about those moments.
Transactional Analysis looks at patterns in how we think, feel, communicate and relate to other people — particularly the ones we may have picked up much earlier in life.
It gives you and your counsellor a shared way of understanding what’s going on. Because once you start spotting a pattern, you have more choice about what you do with it.
Might suit you if:
- You keep noticing similar patterns in relationships.
- You’re curious about where your reactions come from.
- You want to understand yourself and other people a little better.
- You like ideas and frameworks that make things click.
Integrative counselling
Because humans aren’t one-size-fits-all
Integrative counselling doesn’t stick rigidly to one way of doing therapy.
Your counsellor draws on different therapeutic approaches and adapts the work around you.
That might mean exploring something from childhood one week, noticing a relationship pattern the next, or finding something practical to help you through a particularly rubbish Tuesday.
Your needs can change. Your therapy can too.
Might suit you if:
- You have absolutely no idea which therapy approach you need.
- You’d like a mixture of exploration and practical support.
- There’s more than one thing going on.
- You like the idea of therapy adapting as you do.
Psychodynamic therapy
Sometimes the past doesn’t stay neatly in the past
Psychodynamic therapy is interested in how your earlier experiences and relationships might still be showing up in your life today.
Not because everything is your childhood’s fault. But because we all learn things about ourselves, other people and relationships as we grow up — and some of those lessons stick around long after they’ve stopped being useful.
You might explore recurring relationship patterns, feelings you don’t quite understand or why certain situations seem to hit you particularly hard.
Sometimes what happens between you and your counsellor can become useful information too.
Might suit you if:
- You keep finding yourself in familiar relationship patterns.
- You want to understand where certain feelings or behaviours come from.
- Your past still feels present in your life.
- You want to go a little deeper than dealing with what’s happening right now.
Existential therapy
Who am I? What am I doing with my life? What actually matters to me?
And occasionally: Is this really it?
Existential therapy makes room for the questions that don’t always have neat answers — meaning, identity, freedom, responsibility, loneliness, loss, ageing, change and what it means to be human.
The aim isn’t for your counsellor to hand you the meaning of life. Disappointing, we know.
It’s about making space to work out what a meaningful life might look like for you.
Might suit you if:
- You feel lost, stuck or disconnected from your life.
- You’re going through a big transition.
- Questions about identity or purpose keep popping up.
- You want somewhere to think about the bigger picture.
Gestalt therapy
Sometimes your body joins the conversation too
Gestalt therapy is interested in what’s happening right here, right now — not just the story you’re telling, but what you notice while you’re telling it.
A counsellor might gently notice a change in your voice, an emotion that suddenly appears, a physical sensation or the fact that you’ve gone very quiet when you reached a particular part of your story.
There can also be more creative or experiential ways of working — trying something rather than only talking about it.
It’s not about putting you on the spot. It’s about slowing things down enough to notice what’s already there.
Might suit you if:
- You want to understand your reactions more deeply.
- Feelings sometimes show up physically for you.
- You like the idea of something a little more experiential.
- Talking about things only gets you so far.
Solution-focused therapy
What’s working — and how do we get more of it?
Not all therapy has to involve taking everything apart.
Solution-focused therapy spends less time asking “How did we get here?” and more time exploring where you’d like to get to.
You might notice what’s already working, recognise strengths you’ve overlooked and think about small, realistic changes that could move things in the direction you want.
Small steps count. Very much.
Might suit you if:
- There’s something fairly specific you’d like to change.
- You prefer looking forward rather than spending lots of time exploring the past.
- You like practical conversations and clear goals.
- You want to build on what’s already working.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Not every difficult thought needs an argument
ACT — Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — is less about trying to get rid of difficult thoughts and feelings and more about changing your relationship with them.
Because sometimes the harder we try not to think or feel something, the louder it gets.
ACT can help you notice what’s happening internally without letting it run the whole show, while getting clearer about your values and the kind of life you want to move towards.
Might suit you if:
- Your brain spends a lot of time overthinking.
- You get caught up fighting difficult thoughts or feelings.
- Anxiety or worry stops you doing things that matter to you.
- You want to understand what really matters and move towards it.
Compassion-focused therapy
When you’re much kinder to everyone else than you are to yourself
If your inner voice says things to you that you’d never dream of saying to another human, compassion-focused therapy might be worth knowing about.
It explores shame, self-criticism and the ways we learn to protect ourselves — particularly when life hasn’t always felt safe or accepting.
And no, it’s not about simply telling yourself to “be kinder to yourself.”
It’s about developing a different relationship with the parts of you that learned they needed to be hard on you in the first place.
Might suit you if:
- Your inner critic rarely takes a day off.
- Shame or feeling “not good enough” comes up a lot.
- You find it much easier to care for other people than yourself.
- Self-compassion currently makes you want to roll your eyes.
Still don’t know which one you need?
You really don’t have to. Most people don’t arrive at therapy knowing their preferred modality. They arrive because something’s going on and they’d like some help with it. That’s enough. Our consultation gives us a chance to get to know a little about you — what brings you to counselling, what matters to you and what might help you feel comfortable with a counsellor. That’s enough