Hilary Gow

Hello - I’m Hilary.  Counselling has shown me that we all experience emotional and/or physical distress at  times during our lives and can benefit from help to find our way through these.  My role is to provide that by working with you on whatever you want help with right now.  

I have found that we all have the capacity to find a sense of calm and ease within ourselves but that this can get clouded over by our life experiences.  My practice aims to enable a ‘reset’ of this innate capacity.

As well as listening,  I use simple techniques to regulate the nervous system, alongside some mindfulness and practice from IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy to do this.

I have several years experience of working as a counsellor for Wessex Cancer Trust helping people affected by cancer. I am also experienced in working with people who have experienced other traumas as well as panic attacks and emotional burnout.

Respect, kindness and non-judgemental curiosity are core to my approach.

Currently my practice is online this enables me to offer more affordable sessions.

Apart from the first no-charge meet-up, our counselling sessions will be 50 minutes each.  You will need an internet connection and somewhere where you won’t be interrupted so you can focus on the session.

Initially we will look at what has brought you to counselling and what you hope to gain from it.  While doing this we can also explore what methods work best for you.  I am qualified in talking therapy, CBT, mindfulness based approaches, parts therapy and some trauma relieving techniques.  I tend to use elements of all these depending on what seems most useful at the time and what you find works best.

You may wonder how long therapy takes.  It all depends what you want.  It might be worth thinking in terms of 6-8 sessions and then seeing where you are with regard to your original aims.  Often people find more sessions useful and sometimes a lot can be achieved in a single session.

Before we decide to go ahead with counselling I offer a free consultation of up to 30 minutes online for both of us to get an idea of whether we want to work together.  

This would not be a counselling session, more an exploration of what you want from counselling and whether that would work for us both, along with the practicalities.