Linda Ellis Counselling And Psychotherapy

How can counselling and therapy help?

Psychotherapy and counselling offer an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of yourself or your couple relationship and the difficulties you are experiencing.  From that position of understanding you can heal and develop a greater sense of balance and choice in your life.

By exploring the issues involved with a therapist,  emotional and behavioural patterns can be seen and understood in a way that is different to self-exploration, talking with your partner or a friend.

It is a collaborative process with you, or you and your partner,  at the centre and the therapist facilitating an alternative awareness of the difficulties and issues you are facing.

Through this process resolution, healing and choice then become possible, This can become reflected in the relationships and experiences you have in every day life or with each other.

The therapist will respect your values and your life choices.

I am a qualified psychotherapist and counsellor based in Emsworth with a background in therapeutic social care and expertise in emotional difficulties. I have worked in this field for 30 years.

Prior to working as a psychotherapist and counsellor I was a child care social worker for 15 years working both independently and within the statutory sector.

I worked extensively with children, young people and families, particularly those who had experienced abuse and trauma. Much of my work took place within a fostering and adoption framework.

My training as a psychotherapist was integrative and creatively based. Since training as a psychotherapist I have worked in different Further Education and Higher Education establishments offering counselling and psychotherapy to students and staff. When working with Macmillan I offered counselling and therapy to individuals and couples who were experiencing and living with cancer in their lives. I was a personal tutor and part of the training team at a local BACP accredited psychodynamic training. 

Much of my work encompasses exploring the changes and trauma in my client’s lives together with the concomitant difficulties that can arise in the present.

I work as a psychotherapist and counsellor. My psychotherapy training was integrative, creative, and comes from a humanistic approach. This means I hold a core belief that we have the capacity to heal ourselves, whatever that may mean for us, and therapy is one of the ways that can facilitate this process. I draw on the frameworks of psychodynamic, gestalt and transactional analysis thinking and the work of clinicians such as D Winnicott, J. Bowlby, and C Jung as well as contemporary trauma understanding and the work of Sue Johnson and EFT (Emotionally Focussed Therapy).

The field of therapy and counselling is growing and expanding alongside neuroscientific developments. We have a greater understanding of the usefulness of ‘Talking Therapies’ and a greater awareness of how therapy and counselling can usefully contribute to the process of attending to the difficulties and issues which present to us in our everyday lives.

My role, as a therapist, is to discuss, explore and facillitate a dialogue that offers an opportunity for understanding, change and healing. Sometimes words can feel inadequate and using creative materials and resources can usefully inform the therapeutic work. This can provide an alternative method of communication and expression. Sometimes it can be useful to consider the links between the mind and the body, or to explore difficulties in a more abstract way perhaps using images and metaphor.

I am experienced in helping adults and young adults (17 plus) who are experiencing difficulties such as:

Depression
Anxiety
Stress
Relationship difficulties
Change and disruptions to the developmental and maturational process
Identity, gender and sexuality
Trauma
Abuse
Self harm
Mental health issues
Bereavement

The qualities I bring to my work are sensitivity, empathy, openness, directness and creativity. I am committed to providing counselling and psychotherapy in a safe, confidential, non-judgemental and non-discriminatory environment.

Following an enquiry we will arrange an intial session at a mutually convenient time.

 

The initial session is an opportunity for us to meet together,  to think about what has brought you to counselling and therapy, and to identify what you are hoping to gain from the therapeutic work.

We will consider how many sessions feels right for you. Therapeutic work can be short term (generally 4-10 sessions) or longer term and more open ended.

In the initial session we can identify a structure to the work that fits with your hopes and expectations. This can be adapted and changed if needed.

I offer clinical supervision to psychotherapists, counsellors and others working in the field of mental health. This can be one to one or in a small group (generally two-three persons).

The frequency of supervision sessions can be flexible and agreed to suit the needs of the supervisee. I work with trainee and qualified psychotherapists and counsellors and offer face-to-face supervision and telephone supervision.

I see supervision as a collaborative process between the supervisee and supervisor to facilitate and promote safe, ethically sound and creative practice. The supervision space is an opportunity for thinking and reflecting as well as holding a willingness to not know and not understand.

My supervision is placed within a humanistic and psychodynamic framework. Where appropriate, and useful, the supervision process can include the use of art materials and image.

I have been supervising and mentoring counsellors, psychotherapists and trainees for a number of years.

I worked as a supervisor when I was practicing as a social worker, supervising and mentoring social workers, social work trainees, volunteers and sessional workers.

I hold a certificate of clinical psychodynamic supervision and am a UKCP approved supervisor.

“Supervision has been defined as ‘thinking about thinking’, and this can mean a multitude of different and difficult situations arising in the therapeutic dialogue and demanding analysis, understanding and elucidation. It is a process of conceptualizing and consulting with another mind.” – Gertrude Mander

“Like Alice, who was transformed by her journey through the looking glass, and the strange and surprising experiences she had there, the supervisory pair or group, need to engage in a suspension of disbelief or negation of ordinary reality in order to be open to the unconscious communication from the patient and to find the object waiting to be found or created.” – Mary Thomas