Susan Osborne has many years experience providing counselling to a range of conditions.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Developed over 30 years ago, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy focuses mainly on your feelings and emotions today rather than your past experiences. It aims to bring about changes in thought and behaviour through a series of incremental steps until your behaviour or thoughts are more beneficial to you, for example, by becoming more assertive, feeling less depressed or anxious and reducing unwanted negative thoughts. This therapy is used in the treatment of a variety of conditions.

Eating disorders
Some of us develop eating disorders as a means of coping with other problems that we face in life. By disrupting eating routines it is possible to temporarily block out our unhappy emotions. A counsellor can help you understand and cope with your feelings without doing yourself harm and return you to normal eating patterns and a healthy diet.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
When an abnormal situation occurs in our lives, such as being involved in a serious traffic accident or experiencing long-term abuse, a normal reaction is horror, fear and helplessness. This normal reaction becomes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when distressing and intrusive feelings or dreams persist over months or even years. Counselling and psychotherapy can help you explore and understand your feelings and bring you to terms with your experiences.

Bereavement
When somebody close to you dies, you may experience a feeling of shock, numbness, fear or even anger. Talking to a trained counsellor can help you better understand your emotions and reactions to the death of somebody close to you.

Anxiety and panic disorder
Anxiety, phobias and panic attacks can happen to any of us. They may occur in response to a specific situation or may just come 'out of the blue'. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy will help you understand the thoughts and emotions that lead to your fear and help you define and achieve a set of attainable goals to conquer your fears.

Depression
Often depression runs in the family, but in can occur where there has been no family history of depression. People who lack self-confidence, are pessimistic or deal poorly with stress can be particularly prone to depression. However, a stressful situation such as financial difficulties, a divorce or bereavement can also bring on depression. Treatment involves analysing the underlying reasons for the depression and creating strategies to cope with it.

Relationship difficulties and couples counselling
Couples may require counselling at any stage of their relationship such as when deciding whether to live together, the arrival of their first child or dealing with loneliness after the children have left home. Couples counselling is carried out in a non-judgmental way where the emphasis is on looking at ways of moving forward rather than apportioning blame.

The Counselling process

Counselling is an opportunity to look at, reconsider and evaluate, either the wider historical issues in your life or, to focus on one particular issue that is happening now.

Does my future look like my past?
From the outset the client is encouraged to be active and collaborative with the therapeutic process.  Both the client and the therapist are involved in establishing the treatment plan to move the client on in their journey to resolution.
Through examining the repeating triggers which maintain their behaviour it is possible to change those usual responses to a more helpful response.  With the identification of links through the issues a faster route is established than with other therapies.

It is usual to feel apprehensive and cautious about sharing yourself, particularly if you have been hanging on to your 'problem' for a long time. If you want to talk, and want your life to be different then counselling will help you.

Your Assurance

Starting therapy:  What to expect:

In the first session it is helpful to clarify the problem and explore possible ways forward. Please do use the first session to ask any questions that will help you get the most out your counselling.

The sessions start with an intake form enabling both the client and therapist to engage in a clinical history.  To ‘tell the story’ that brought them to take that often difficult step to ask for help.  It can be helpful to build a picture, without going into the details of the trauma so the therapist can tune into the presenting issues.

The first session gives you, the client, the opportunity to relax into a comfortable setting, to be able to ask questions around how and why this therapy works.  It is usual to establish a contract of work to give clear boundaries and establish responsibilities within the ethical framework of therapy.

As an experienced therapist of some thirty years, Susan has a real understanding of just how scary it can be to talk about those things that have, perhaps, been carried inside your head for many years. It is natural to feel anxious. It is also usual, at the end of the first session to leave with the feeling of having been heard, possibly for the first time in your life and having a new sense of hope.

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