Lucy Cavendish
Integrative counsellorAbout Me
I am a qualified counsellor working with adults, adolescents and couples. I am currently available to work with clients online.
COUNSELLING UPDATE
I am offering online counselling to anyone who needs it during these troubles times via Skype/Zoom/FaceTime/anything...
Nearly all my clients have gone online bar one or two - even the Imago couples are trying it out with me on Zoom but, as long as OTS therapy centre in Oxford is open and we all follow DHE advice, I am seeing clients there and will continue to do so for the time being. Obviously if anyone is ill, or I am ill or any member of our households are, we will all go online. But these are tricky times...
I imagine that many families might need some help right now or in the longterm. We are not used to being together for this amount of time without usual distractions - much good can be done but also many difficult feelings and emotions may arise. It is important we have support. My fantasy is a summer of play and fun and bonding and walking and talking - last chance before my children start peeling off in to their own lives (two will probably leave home next year). But maybe we will drive each other crazy.
And couples...sometimes these enforced periods of togetherness backfire somewhat...
So, I am here with all my own projections and thoughts from what to do when estranged families are forced back together? Or how do we look at and engage with our anxiety? How so we find kindess and empathy when we are frightened/nervous? Then there's the erotica around not being able to touch - and gloves? Don't get me started on gloves...like being in another era - a throwback..
I am also offering reduced priced counselling for those who need it and cannot afford full price - this is while the crisis lasts with a potential commitment to review payments once the shadow has passed which I accept may take some time....
During my work as a counsellor - and as a human being living in this planet right now - I have come to believe that there are just times when we need support and understanding from someone other than our close friends and family. It does not necessarily mean we are in crisis; it may be that we need a confidential space in which to talk, to be heard, understood and not judged. Sometimes, we may just want to sit in a room with another person - someone warm and empathic - and give ourselves a chance to think, maybe to speak, maybe just to be.
This is what counselling offers. It is a safe, contained space within which to explore, to move in to a better, deeper and more accepting relationship with yourself and others through the support of a trained counsellor who will be beside you and with you as feelings, thoughts and emotions come up. For me, as a trained counsellor with a Level 4 diploma in Advanced Integrative counselling, it's all about listening, thinking, working together in the room with what is going on outside the room but also inside the room. I work a lot with the feelings in the room. Integrated counselling means I have trained in psychoanalytic counselling as espoused by Freud, Jung et al as well as using a person-centred approach which means I deal with the day-to-day and immediate problems and challenges and look at what is happening for you now. I am aware that going in to counselling can feel momentous and many people feel nervous, worried and shy. My role is to help you through difficult times and to allay your fears and concerns and also to help maybe make tiny shifts so that things that appear maybe uncomfortable and insoluble become something that can be shared and worked through. It can be an illuminating journey we take together.
Over the past three years I have been working as a counsellor with 11-plus clients at a youth counselling centre and I also work with adult clients. I am available to see adults and children aged 11-plus as well as couples. I offer an all-round therapeutic approach and my areas of expertise are anxiety, depression, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, gender identity, panic attacks, mild psychotic incidents, suicide ideation, couples, adolescents, anger issues and support for couples at every level of their relationship including better endings. I have many clients post-separation and divorce who feel they need support when everything else seems difficult and tricky. I have also helped families who are struggling with a range of issues, especially often when their children reach the teenage years. Sometimes adolescents prefer counselling by themselves, sometimes with their families to work through what systems are in place that might need looking at.
I am happy to work in person and potentially on Skype and Facetime. I am also happy to have an initial session in person or by phone to work out what a person potentially needs.
I am also a writer who has spent the last two decades interviewing people and, in a working capacity, I have met a range of people and travelling the globe which, I believe, has helped me be a better and more broad-minded therapist who has lived a life. I will never stop studying as a therapist; I have just started exploring body-centred therapy which helps people access their deep feelings through their body and how they express themselves in and through their body. I have also been looking at psychodramas as a form of group therapy.
for more information please go to lucycavendishcounselling.com http://www.lucycavendishcounselling.com/
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Issues often worked with
Types of therapy
Therapy offered
Client groups
Fees
I start at 50 pounds an hour for individuals depending on travel expenses. Couples start from eighty pounds.
Training and qualifications
I have Level 2, Level 3 and Level 4 Advanced diploma (Dips.Couns) in Integrative Counselling from the Mary Ward Centre in London.
I have a certificate in Introduction in Couples Counselling and am currently taking an Advanced Couples Counselling diploma. I am also training for Imago Couples system
I have spent two years studying psychoanalytic therapy and psychodrama with Andrew Wallas, a psychologist and mentor.