Sometimes, counselling is called therapy, psychotherapy or talking therapy. All involve a conversation between you and the fully qualified counsellor (or therapist) with the goal to have a more positive life.

You can talk about thoughts and feelings (depression, anger, anxiety); get your thoughts in order; manage your behaviour (aggression, addiction, infidelity); or develop your personality (confidence, speaking, relationship skills).

Overall, if therapy works, your will help your mental health, relationships, work, and approach to things.

When the message is sent, Michael will contact you to offer a free initial conversation. This is an opportunity for you to identify what you hope counselling can do for you. It is also a chance for you to ask questions and to get a sense whether you would feel comfortable working with Michael. It is also important that Michael identifies that he has the correct skills, experience, and training to help you.

If you feel comfortable, a full session can be booked in a safe and confidential space.

Depending on the type of therapy, it can be short-term or long-term, and depends on several things. The first thing is what you want to achieve (if it’s brief or something deeper and more complex), whilst other factors include how often you have sessions; the work you do outside of counselling; how open and honest you are during sessions; and whether other goals (or areas to work on) are identified during the counselling period.

Although I do not offer free therapy, I offer reduced rates to individuals who need it.

Therapy sessions in Wokingham are £65 per session, with low-cost therapy being discussed at point of contact.

Sessions are fifty minutes.

They can happen as frequently as is needed to address the issue. The most common frequency is weekly but sessions can happen fortnightly or less frequently.

Whilst it is important to commit to the work, you are not contracted into any number of sessions. It is important that the sessions are working for you and it might be best to try another counsellor.

It would be important to ensure a proper ending, too, so let the counsellor know you want to end and work at it.

For in person session, I have counselling rooms in Wokingham. I am hoping to expand to Bracknell; however, if counselling in Wokingham is not practical, I provide counselling sessions online, too.

I have qualified as an integrative counsellor and therapist. This means that I use several approaches including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), psychodynamic therapy, person-centred therapy, existential therapy. Each has its strengths and I use tools or approaches from each to meet the needs of the client.

CBT can often provide more structure and tools for the client to use. Whilst I like CBT, it also has its limits, which is why I look to psychodynamic therapy to explore root causes of behaviour as well as the clients attachment style. CBT is great especially when complemented with other approaches.

I also use a solution-focused approach with aspects of DBT to help the client develop meaningful goals and how to manage difficult feelings - in DBT, it is called 'distress tolerance'.

Counselling tends to be in the moment and less about the past. Psychotherapy tends to explore unconscious elements of behaviour, including our core beliefs and how we relate to others.

Generally, they can be used interchangeably but psychotherapy can be more long-term and explore aspects that may not be immediately obvious to the client but may still be a significant part of their identity and behaviour.

I use the word counselling because it seems more acceptable to most people; however, I use a psychotherapy approach to ensure as many aspects of a person's life are in order and resolved.

Several studies, reviews, meta-analyses, and trials have demonstrated that counselling and psychotherapy produce positive, enduring outcomes for both short-term and long-term interventions