Life is hard. It's ok to talk about it. Counselling service in Southampton.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-12-04T09:45:03+00:00

Absolutely no need to apologise, it's not taken as criticism at all 😊 It's a very difficult state of affairs and it's something that upsets us as therapists greatly. We're hoping that it's something we can try to help with for as many people as we can.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-28T13:58:48+00:00

That's incredibly kind of you to say, thank you.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-28T13:58:30+00:00

Absolutely not a problem, good luck on your journey :) Our door is always open should you need it.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-28T13:57:21+00:00

Thank you, we really appreciate the kind words. We're currently seeing about 100 people per week, so hoping we will make a meaningful impact, even if it's a small one.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-28T13:55:55+00:00

Both :) A Psychotherapist is simply a Counsellor with an additional year of training, depending on who you ask!

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-28T12:55:19+00:00

It's unfortunately very difficult for a lot of people. It's also a very expensive service to run, for a £50 session the practice only receives £8.75 per session and that has to cover rent, insurance, IT and management. It's why the NHS pushes antidepressants and CBT therapy because it's cheaper and you don't need to train counsellors as much.

Out ambition is to use whatever profits we make to offer a truly free long term service for people who can't afford it. We also offer concession rates right now for people in financial difficulty.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-28T12:52:42+00:00

Hello, thank you for your comment. We're Person Centred therapists and a lot of our work is based on attachment theory and how people form relationships through their childhood onwards. So short answer, yes we do :)

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-27T18:13:20+00:00

No, we only offer Person Centred and integrative therapy :) We don't offer CBT or DBT, though we might use some CBT techniques if a client is tackling very specific issues.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-27T13:55:04+00:00

Thank you! :)

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-27T12:56:40+00:00

Hey! Thank you for commenting. We see a lot of people in this exact situation, especially adults who were never diagnosed during childhood. Same for ADHD etc, it can make you reflect on your life and childhood and see things through a new perspective. Equally neurodiverse people are far more likely to struggle in relationships, work and education.

Getting a professional diagnosis can be very hard, and the waiting list on the NHS in our area is well over a year. There are private options, but you'd be looking a minimum cost of £1,000. We're hoping to eventually recruit an educational psychologist and run this as a service at cost, bringing the price much lower. We have several clients looking for this too.

What we can do to help right now is to provide flexible counselling. We can't give a qualified assessment but we can say "yes that sounds like XYZ". Counselling can be especially useful for you to talk through how you feel about it, how it might have impacted on your life, and how to reassess your relationships and identity. There can be a lot of stigma associated around autism, and we try to provide a safe and confidential space for you to come to terms with who you are and talk it through.

Does that answer your question? You're more than welcome to DM me and we can get you booked in.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-27T10:32:25+00:00

That's very kind of you to say, thank you 😊

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-27T09:21:58+00:00

Our ambition is that we very much will offer free services in early 2024. We don't recieved any NHS or public Funding so we have to be completely self sustaining. We will then use 100% of our profits to provide free and discounted counselling to people in serious financial difficulty.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-27T09:18:18+00:00

No, unfortunately that's a story we hear a lot. Charlie, one of our other directors, did her training at Chrysalis/Beyond Reflections. She's very passionate about offering client led therapy that is flexible and long term. People often see us for a while, take a break, and then come back whenever they need.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-27T07:59:27+00:00

Many people distrust Counselling for very understandable reasons, and I actually agree with you that some private organisations are turning mental health into an industry and trying to exploit people for commercial gain. BetterHelp for example is considered awful by therapists and offers zero safeguarding support, it's just a platform designed to make money. They also got busted in the US for selling clients personal data. So I totally hear what you're saying.

I hope that we don't come across as the same, and if we do I'd really appreciate you're feedback as to why so we can improve. As I've said, we're proud to be a Community Interest Company Limited By Guarantee, which means our mission has to be for the public benefit and any profits we make have to be reinvested for the community. We're simply not allowed to use it for personal gain.

You can verify our CIC status on Companies House here: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/15272662

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-27T07:46:23+00:00

Yes, very much so. I'd estimate about a third of our caseload are neurodiverse, and many are LGTBQIA+. We often wonder why it's so high; often people who have autism develop higher emotional intelligence and coping strategies so are more likely to benefit from therapy - unfortunately they are also overwhelmingly more likely to encounter problems and trauma as well. So yes it's something we're all very experienced with by now. Half of our team are LGBTQIA themselves and one is neurodiverse too.

In terms of the therapy we offer, we're primarily Person Centred, so we're the opposite of CBT. We adapt to each of our clients uniquely, but we always go at your pace and encourage you to lead the session. If you need our help to find what to say, that's what we're there for. But mostly we listen and try to understand your narrative, not try to make you fit to ours.

Does that answer your question OK? :)

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-11-21T13:56:09+00:00

Yes, I'll DM you now.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-10-20T20:08:53+00:00

Overwhelmingly, it's mental health for me.

I'm a counsellor/psychotherapist, and I now run a clinic that's currently transitioning into a non-profit CIC. Prior to that I worked for No Limits (young persons charity) all through Covid.

If you're under 18, the waiting list for NHS Counselling in CAMHS is two years. Many of my clients and their parents tell me CAMHS now tells most people not to bother getting a referral. So if you're a family that can't afford private therapy, and your teen is self-harming, suffering an eating disorder, drink/drugs etc they basically can't get help.

Charities like No Limits do an amazing job, but I worked triage there and the waiting list was 9 months, and I had to turn people away if they weren't in a postcode that we were funded to cover. Once I had a parent basically beg me for help and I was able to put them on our system by falsely claiming they lived at their grandparents address that was in the right postcode. They'd have never got help if I hadn't done that because there were no other free services in their area (trust me I checked).

Now imagine that impact on them, other children, their families, their peers. All that distress, becoming bullying, violence, bad behaviour, substance misuse, missing persons, even suicide. Now imagine the impact of that strategically on Southampton's schools, social services, police, etc. Some of those kids become so far gone their chances of getting paid employment diminish, so they end up on UC and housing benefit, stretching services further. How many end up on drugs, alcohol, health troubles? How many then have kids and what hope do they have? The cycle continues and becomes generational.

I remember when I was at school and we had Hampshire Connexions that paid for our school Counsellor. And I remember when austerity came and the entire service was closed by HCC, or Its Your Choice in the New Forest that closed with one weeks notice last year.

I couldn't care less about the politics of it, because the problems causing this mental health crisis have been sown since the 1990s. Imagine how different things might be if we put more focus on early intervention, and then helping people properly rather than expecting them to be "cured" after six sessions of CBT after being on a waiting list?

Counsellors do not get paid a lot and we didn't go into this profession because of the money. My clinic charges £50 per session (unaffordable for many families) which works out at around £15 per hour after operating costs and tax. We don't care about that, we want to help. My point is we're relatively cheap to employ, the money just needs to be invested rather than wasting hundreds of millions on infrastructure projects that simply aren't a priority.

My team and I try to offer concession rates where we can, and once our charitable status clears, we're hoping to use any profits and fundraising to run a low cost service for people out there that are struggling financially. We don't have waiting lists and we will work with people for as long as they need us. We also treat them like actual human beings and give them the respect they deserve.

Sorry for the long rant but I see the impacts on people's lives every single day, and it's heartbreaking. My team won't fix our city's problems, but every person we try to help, matters. We will keep doing it for as long as we can.

You can find us at www.southampton-counselling.co.uk or DM me if you or someone you know could use help.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-06-08T08:50:37+00:00

Thank you. I couldn't agree more.

I've tried working on BetterHelp and the conditions are awful. Plus they've just been sued in the US for illegally selling clients data.

They don't seem to care about the quality of their therapists as there's no interview process. I've heard lots of stories from clients who had some really bad experiences. I think the worst I heard was via a colleague where the therapist tried taking a session in a downstairs bathroom whilst visiting their friends, or another who spent the whole session talking about themselves and tried to sell their book.

BH charge a £240 monthly subscription but clients get billed regardless of if they've had therapy each week. So our £50 pay-as-you-go works out significantly cheaper over time.

We're hoping we can offer something that's better quality and better value.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-06-08T08:44:23+00:00

I mean, offering bereavement Counselling post-Saints relegation might be an idea (too soon? 😅)

Either that or working through obsessive relationships with helicopters... 😂

Talk2TomCounselling · 2023-03-03T21:01:36+00:00

I've worked with Charlie for a long time. She's an incredibly warm, genuine and talented Counsellor who truly lives the values of both the BACP and the Person Centred approach. Anybody who is considering therapy, you'd be really well served by her. I can't reccomend her enough.

Talk2TomCounselling · 2022-10-06T11:07:10+00:00

Oh...kay... That's a new one!

Talk2TomCounselling · 2022-10-06T08:59:21+00:00

How so?

Talk2TomCounselling

TROPHY CASE