Hayley Louise Garrod

I am a qualified integrative counsellor which means I have training and experience of using multiple therapeutic approaches and models to best serve your needs with what you are looking to explore. Building a good therapeutic relationship is as important to me as the approach I use.

I recently worked as a counsellor in an organisation where short-term therapy was offered. This has allowed me to develop effective short-term therapy strategies for those looking to talk about a specific focus. Similar to open-ended counselling practices, I successfully work with clients who want a deeper exploration of themselves, identifying and working through difficult or unwanted patterns in their current lives and creating new perspectives to help empower them moving forward.

I believe counselling is a collaborative journey of exploration, where I will join you on your journey actively offering reflections and my wonderings for us to discuss. In this way, I will offer you new perspectives on the narratives and processes you bring to sessions and help you view your experiences in new ways. I find a good way of sharing the narrative of your experiences is through language and metaphor and actively bring visual techniques into sessions where appropriate.

I believe there are 4 stages to therapeutic growth: Awareness, Acceptance, Compassion and Empowerment. I will help you grow further awareness of the difficulties you are experiencing or have experienced or impact you. I will then help you to accept that this is part of your reality, including hardships it creates or the negative feelings it produces. I will then help you to grow more compassion for yourself in these experiences by understanding.

You can contact me by email to express your interest in counselling and explain briefly what you are wanting to work on.

I offer a free 20 minute introductory call, either by telephone or via video call. It is important for you as a client to find out if you feel comfortable with me and my style of counselling by asking me questions that matter to you. I would ask you to explain briefly what you would initially like to explore as a focus and whether you would benefit from specific approaches. You could tell me if you have ever had counselling before as this can sometimes be important.

Initially, I will offer weekly sessions to help us build a good therapeutic relationship. After 4 weekly sessions, you would be welcome to change your preference and see me either weekly or less frequently. You would be welcome to choose a finite number of sessions to work through a specific issue or to opt for ongoing longer-term support.

As the sessions progress, I regularly encourage you to revisit the original focus for counselling and understand if this has shifted or if greater work is wanted toward the same focus.