LOCATION: Home-based consulting room (Patcham)
AVAILABILITY: Monday-Thursday daytimes & evenings
PRICE: £55 per session
SPECIALISMS:
Sex and relationships
Anxiety and depression
Boarding school syndrome
Abuse
Bereavement
Career counselling
Panic attacks
Self-esteem
Separation and Divorce
Sexuality

Training

James is an experienced and accredited counsellor with the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP). His training has been rigorous and externally accredited. He was awarded the Tunbridge Wells Counselling Centre Certificate in Psychodynamic Counselling in 2014 and the Diploma in 2016. He has been counselling individual clients since then.

He believes that continuing professional development is important and regularly attend trainings and seminars to extend his knowledge and keep up to date with current thinking.

James abides by the BACP's code of ethics and in line with this his work is regularly supervised by a registered and qualified supervisor.

Approach

The Counselling relationship is central to James’s work. Each client is unique and what happens in a session is co-created between you and them.

Some of the following might be touched on:

Events in your past and what sense you made of them.
The story of your past and how you were brought up.
Your current ways of relating to others and what these may mean.
Your internal world and how it feels inside.
Dreams and fantasies.

Sex and relationships

How we relate to others in all kinds of relationships, but particularly in our closest reveal patterns and a style of relating that we may not be aware of. If similar issues keep arising in relationships it may be time to pause and reflect.

Our sexuality is one facet of relating that can become troubling because it is so central and potentially charged. There are many problematic aspects of our sex lives that appear to be just about sex but are actually about relating; for example post-coital depression, premature ejaculation and porn use that you are unhappy with. Ultimately, the most important thing is how we relate to ourselves.

Anxiety and depression

Anxiety and depression are two general terms but we certainly know if we are troubled by them. Sometimes anxiety may descend in an incapacitating frightening way for no apparent reason, or be a fairly constant weight that shuts down our ability to engage with life. In this second sense it can merge into depression causing a loss of or questioning of meaning, which can happen at any age. James has worked with these different guises of anxiety and depression over many years and believes it is possible to understand what these symptoms are trying to tell us and find ways to move on.

Boarding school syndrome

Being sent to boarding school can shape us in profound ways both positive and negative. Family life effectively ends at that point. This experience can be shattering and a new adapted self has to emerge. Troubling behaviour in adulthood can often be traced to this period. This can occur across the social spectrum to all looked after children and even to those whose school experience was devastating, despite living at home. It's called a syndrome because the effects are similar in different people and can be instantly recognisable. The psychodynamic approach is well suited to this area because of its focus on the links between present behaviour and the past.