Counselling and psychotherapy are both ‘talking therapies', or in other words, conversations that attempt to help us make sense of our lives. Their aim is to clarify those aspects of a person's life that cause distress, confusion or lead us to feel blocked, stuck or unfulfilled. It is through such clarification that one is more able to make choices about those things that we may wish to change or understand more fully, and also to come to terms with those things that we can't.

People come to counselling or psychotherapy for all sorts of reasons. A significant event, such as a bereavement or a relationship breakdown might be the prompt. Or there could be a desire to identify and break unhealthy patterns of behaviour. One needn't even be clear about ones reasons for starting counselling – many people experience a general sense of unhappiness, anxiety or dissatisfaction and use counselling as a way of finding out what these feelings could mean. In short, there are no ‘right' or ‘wrong' reasons - there merely has to be a willingness to take a closer look at those concerns that we cannot easily make sense of by ourselves.

There are no real meaningful differences between modern-day counselling and psychotherapy. They can both focus on a single issue or a range of concerns, and be either short or long-term in duration. I am accredited and registered as both a Counsellor and a Psychotherapist, and am happy to identify myself as either.