FAQ

€50.00 per hour

Sliding scale available for students and the unemployed (Contact for details)

Counselling is a professional one-to-one relationship that has boundaries. It is typically 50 minutes – 1 hour in duration depending on client wishes. An arrangement is made to meet for a few sessions with the objective of bringing about client well-being. This is done in a space where a client can be themselves; enabling them to think, to talk and to feel in a non-judgemental, empathic, person-centred environment.

Sharing how you feel can sometimes feel strange if your coping mechanism has been or is to keep things to yourself. It is in your talking that you enable growth and change from within. This enables you discover your own strength and thus new ways of leading the life that suits you.

Sometimes, we experience a sense of things not being as they should be in our lives and we don’t know what this is about. Alternately, we may feel overwhelmed and in need of new perspectives or perhaps we need someone who really listens and gets where we are coming from. Our emotions can almost seem to debilitate us and we can lose sight of self. For some of us we suffer from mood-swings which overtake and which we’d like to better control.

Some clients will attend counselling because they are feeling sad, angry, anxious and find they lack interest in things they used once enjoy, perhaps they have lost a loved one through death or a relationship ending, drug addiction, eating disorders, sexual problems, loss of a job, work related issues, financial and housing issues, physical or emotional abuse, or maybe they have experienced a traumatic event.

The start of change. The role of counselling is to help you to help yourself. Through counselling, you empower yourself with different ways to handle life issues.

Counselling is not always a quick process. Acquainting or reacquainting ourselves with self sometimes is not always smooth. For some it can feel very strange and we may wish to run from the feelings that can come up in the process. An exploration of inner self is a courageous step that can take time and produce temporary periods of frustration as we work things out and pave the way for renewal.

Goals are helpful in achieving results. Changing our lives can be hard. And implementing new aspects can sometimes be even harder.   Understanding and setting expectations enables the counselling process to flow better and reach a more productive outcome.

Different counsellors may use different types of therapeutic approaches; humanistic, psychodynamics, cognitive behavioural therapy or perhaps an integrative approach to name a few.

An integrative approach takes account of all aspects of the client; behaviour, cognition, psychology, social and spiritual aspects. Typically, Karen uses this approach and incorporates Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, motivational interviewing, or perhaps a solution focused behavioural therapy approach.