What to expect from counselling
We are a specialist service with a vast amount of experience supporting people with alcohol and drug use. We can help you to find a counsellor who is right for you and your needs.
New to counselling?
Everyone needs to talk. We all have problems and talking about them can help. Sometimes though, we can’t talk to the people we are close to. At times like this, it can help to talk to someone who is not a friend or family member and who therefore has no personal vested interest in the outcome of our problems, simply a professional one.
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This is where counselling can help. Speaking to a counsellor or therapist who is specially trained to listen can be very helpful, even life-changing.
This opportunity can allow us to be able to stand back sufficiently to have a broader view, or sometimes to enable us to face things that are difficult to think about or even admit to ourselves.
Your first session
In the first session, it is important to discuss with you counsellors what you hope to achieve from your sessions.
Our counsellors are happy to work with your chosen aims and goals and to help you find ways of achieving them.
Then your counsellor will be able to tell you how long this may take.
Ending
Although it can sometimes be tempting, unplanned abrupt endings are best avoided wherever possible. When you decide to end counselling, discuss your wishes with your counsellor and arrange a final ending session. It can be very beneficial to plan a formal end to counselling.
Confidentiality
Everything you share with your counsellor in the course of your counselling will be treated as highly confidential. However, there are some limits to confidentiality, which you need to be aware of:
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In accordance with the ethical framework of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy or UK Association for Transactional Analysis, all counsellors are required to undertake regular supervision.
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We may be legally or ethically obliged to break confidentiality where, for example, your welfare or the welfare of others may be at risk.
Abstinence
Short or long term?
Controlled drinking
A period of abstinence can help our bodies return to a state of equilibrium. For example, we know that without alcohol, our sleep patterns can become more satisfying and reparative rather than disrupted by its effects. Sleep on the BBC.
Our cognitive functioning abilities improve enabling us to make decisions more likely to be in our best interests.
Other benefits can include better overall health, returning appetite, improved relationships and a more positive outlook.
Short term - what's possible
To address a recent issue involving excessive consumption focusing on strategies which help maintain a healthier relationship with alcohol/drugs.
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Explore patterns of alcohol/drug use and be able to understand and calculate units.
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Understand the cycle of change and how set and setting are the drivers of substanable reduction,
Long term- underlying issues
A longer period of therapy looking at issues that have resulted in alcohol being a strategy for managing life in general.
You may wish to reduce your drinking to more healthy levels, so-called ‘controlled drinking’ and not feel that complete abstinence is necessary or desirable.
Our counsellors are happy to work with your chosen aims and goals and to find ways of achieving them. Exploring trigger points and reasons, why and when we drink, can be useful, together with finding alternative behaviours.
Relapse prevention
Fee's
Drug Misuse
There can be specific situations or events that can trigger a return to drinking or a one off binge.
By exploring the underlying reasons for such an occurrence we can gain control of our drinking and manage situations differently
Alcohol withdrawal
If you are planning to stop drinking please read this information first to ensure you manage the reduction in a healthy way.
On each counsellors page, you will find
the fees they charge and any concessions they offer.
This can be by cash, cheque or transfer.
The sessions take place each week at an agreed time
The way a drug affects the person who has taken it depends as much on the psychological characteristics, personality and mood of the individual (and their social context) as upon the chemical properties of the drug itself. The notion that specific drugs have fixed and predictable effects (which are the same from person to person) remains extremely widespread but is in fact not the case.
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Our counsellors work with the person to help understand the need for the drug in certain circumstances and how this begins to affect other areas of one’s life.
Professional Membership
All our counsellors are members of a professional body either the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and/or UK Association for Transactional Analysis
