What Is Counselling?

What is the difference between psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling?

Psychotherapy is often a deeper, longer-term journey — one that gently supports those moving through profound trauma, emotional suffering, or life transitions that can leave us feeling lost, overwhelmed, or disconnected from ourselves. It offers space to slow down and explore the layers beneath what is troubling you, with care, patience, and compassion.

Counselling, while sometimes shorter-term in nature, can be equally transformative. It may focus on a particular dilemma, crossroads, or emotional struggle, helping you make sense of what is unfolding in your life. Through reflection, guidance, and the opportunity to openly share your inner world, counselling can support you in finding clarity and making choices that feel aligned with your authentic self.

Both psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling are for anyone who has reached a point where old coping strategies no longer bring lasting relief — where something within is asking to be heard more deeply.

Together, we create a safe, confidential, and non-judgmental space where your experiences, emotions, and struggles can be explored with curiosity and care. Rather than seeing symptoms as something to simply silence or “fix,” psychotherapy invites us to listen differently — to consider what these symptoms may be expressing, revealing, or asking of you on a deeper level.

Within the presence of a trained professional and compassionate witness, you are invited into a space where every part of your story can be met with understanding, honesty, and humanity.

During sessions I practice according to three main principles:

Non-judgemental - I work with a client’s reality, accepting them as they are and without judgement or prejudice, supporting them towards a journey of self-acceptance.
Empathic - I provide clients with a space to express complex or difficult emotions. People often need to be heard and acknowledged before they can understand what might be holding them back or keeping them caught in an unhealthy cycle.
Empowering - I work with clients to realise the best version of themselves, offering authentic connection, supporting you to realise and manifest your own potential. Authentic empowerment means having the ability to feel safe in your vulnerability, and knowing and accepting your limitations, as well as realising your strengths and developing your relationships.

My practice is best described as relational therapy. It is a non-directive form of therapy, which acknowledges that you are the expert on your life and that I do not claim to have any answers that you cannot find from within yourself. However, it can be helpful to be supported in finding these answers or a path which is where therapy plays an important part.

My part is to listen, accept and assist in enabling you to gain increased awareness of yourself, your environment and the implications of the choices you make, leading you to a more meaningful and fulfilling life. My method relies heavily on a collaboration, with me acting as a guide for you to explore what you need to.

Specialist Areas And Experience

Addictive behaviours
Stress and anxiety
Depression/prolonged low mood
Relationship difficulties
Life transition
Trauma
Loss or bereavement
Existential crisis

CounSoul focuses on an individual’s inner suffering, meaning that which comes from the struggle from within us emotionally and psychologically as we journey through life and its various stages and transitions. I offer a space for you to examine your current life and together explore your historic ‘Story’, in a collaborative attempt to ‘re-vision’ the meaning you have given to it.

The ‘Soul’ in CounSoul.

The human ‘Soul’ as an indefinable concept, but is essentially the core focus of the therapy I am trained in. It is that which transcends the five senses of how we experience the world. It is concerned with experiences which stay in the memory and impact on the heart. It is more about the journey through life and less about the specific details or labels we and others choose to put on this. It is the experience we hold in our memory and in our body, which forms our unique experiences as we develop and grow as individuals. This impacts on us in many different ways.

Every one of us comes with a ‘story’ attached to our past which is influenced by our early experiences, and which forms our central core beliefs as adults. If we do not give attention to the ‘soul’ within our story it suffers over time as we begin to lose our sense of self, purpose, belonging and often that which we are led to believe brings us happiness, as this fails to lose its meaning on a deeper level.

Therapy can help in revisioning your story, and viewing your life from a different perspective, by helping you to see where you neglect your own sense of self and well-being by getting unconsciously caught in outdated behaviours to compensate for this.

In Soulful Therapy, the question is often not why am I suffering in this way? But instead, why might this be happening to me now, and what might its meaning be?