Simon Weber Counselling and Psychotherapy

What happens in counselling and psychotherapy?

Going to counselling or psychotherapy is often misunderstood as a sign of weakness of failure. There is a commonly held cultural stigma about "getting help".

In reality what happens in counselling and psychotherapy is assisted self-help. Each client's difficulties in the world are explored on an individual basis and ways are sought from within each person to influence the problem being encountered.

The task is to search for some kind of new understanding of the problem -- what questions can be asked about this problem? What exactly is this problem and how does it operate? Where does it come from? How can its arising be explained? Is it alone; or is it linked in with other problems?

As the answers to these questions develop, clients can begin to experiment with new ways of seeing themselves, running their lives and living out their relationships.

The process is not about advice giving, nor about applying formatted techniques, nor about offering prescribed ideas. It is interactional, focused very much on the actual experience of the client in the here-and-now, and seeks to obtain changes and improvements in life that fit each person's particular circumstances and aspirations.

Email me for further information or with any questions and I will endeavour to reply as quickly as possible. Or phone me on 01752 603221 to speak to me in person. Please leave a message and a number if I am busy. ALL ENQUIRIES ARE TREATED AS CONFIDENTIAL.

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My responsibilty as therapist is to find ways to enquire, drawing on established theory and a knowledge base about human experience built over many years since Freud invented the "talking cure" in the late 19th Century. Many others since then have added to this bank of ideas -- my job is to find out which parts of this fund of knowledge make sense of each client's past and present experience; and to help that individual create from it and their own desires, new ways of living their particular life in a more fulfilling manner.

My interests:

My professional interest rests mostly with psychodynamics -- the influence of the unconscious in our experience -- although I recognise the interplay between family systems theory and psychodynamics. In couples work it is essential to understand the dance between arising individual experience and the dynamics of interacting minds.

I also think a lot about the existential aspect of the human condition: how to answer in day to day living those profound questions about the meaning of life: Why am I here? What is my life for? What does it mean to live a good life?

As self-consciously aware beings there are times when these questions burn brightly, usually when a crisis arises or a major change takes place. Bringing this element to the work keeps it connected to those absolute fundamentals that underwrite almost everything that we do.

Email me for further information or with any questions and I will endeavour to reply as quickly as possible. Or phone me on 01752 603221 to speak to me in person. Please leave a message and a number if I am busy. ALL ENQUIRIES ARE TREATED AS CONFIDENTIAL.