Kate Heavey BA (Hons) BACP Accredited - Individual, couple and relationship counsellor and psychotherapist.  In person in Alfold, Cranleigh, Surrey and online across the UK

When experiences happen along life's path, we can get disconnected. Counselling offers a relationship back to reconnection.

Who am I?

I am a BACP Accredited counsellor and psychotherapist with over 10,000 therapy hours and more than a decade in private practice. I work with individuals, couples and twos navigating relationship difficulties, loss, childhood experiences, and the patterns that keep showing up however hard you try to change them.

I am also a curious human being.

Curious Kate has always wanted to understand why some people move through life with inner resilience, determination and grit, while others carry anxiety, depression and a sense of isolation. Is it really just about survival and attachment? We are learning so much more about neuroscience, epigenetics and the relationship between nature and nurture. The individuality and complexity of human beings genuinely amazes me.

My belief is that we are all, to some degree, a product of our early environments — of the relationships formed in those younger years, which continue to inform us today. And if you are reading this, you are likely already a thriver rather than a survivor, because you are here, contemplating change.

My Own Experience

I come to this work not only as a trained therapist but as someone who has lived.

I score highly on the ACEs scale (Adverse Childhood Experiences). I have known what it is to feel not enough, to carry shame, to look back and wish I had known differently at the time. I have sat in the client's chair myself, more than once, and I know what it means to have someone truly alongside you.  Not advising, not fixing, but genuinely present.

My own counselling taught me to feel my feelings rather than escape them. To understand that my patterns made sense given what I had experienced. To move from surviving to living. I continue to attend my own counselling as needed, because I believe that the best therapists are those who do their own work.

A wounded healer, if you like.

I do not share this to make my story part of your therapy. I share it so you know that when I sit with you, I am not sitting at a distance. I understand, from the inside, what it is to be shaped by early experiences and to want something different.

How I Work

My approach is relational and integrative, grounded in Petruska Clarkson's five relationship model. In practice, the mode I work in most is the reparative relationship which offers presence, both physical and emotional, for clients who may have rarely felt truly seen and connected with, where they are.

I trained as a relational integrative counsellor because I love relationship. This modality allows me to tailor therapy to suit you, whether as an individual, couple or two, because there is no one size fits all. We are all unique and special.

Freud suggested that counsellors be blank screens, offering nothing of themselves. I disagree. I sit alongside you as a fellow fallible human being. Where it is in your interest, I may occasionally self-disclose. This is part of your reparative work as it can be helpful to know you are not alone, that others have felt what you feel and that you are not strange or broken. 

My role is to listen, reflect, champion, support and tentatively challenge. To offer insight using my experience, training and, if I am honest, a degree of sixth sense that has developed over thousands of hours of sitting with clients. I am not living your life so I do not give advice or tell you what to do as it is about what you take from counselling.

I draw on Kristin Neff's work on self-compassion and Carl Rogers' unconditional positive regard of accepting, supporting, and valuing you as you are.  You are likely to be the toughest critic on you so it is not for me to judge your actions, behaviour, or choices. As I often say to clients, your survival brain has done its job 100% as you are still alive which is no small thing.  You are absolutely good enough.

A Tony Robbins saying is ‘where focus goes energy flows’ and our work is about gently redirecting your energy away from self-criticism towards self-understanding. Encouraging you to move from looking outward for external validation towards finding internal validation within.

Ultimately, the effectiveness of our work together depends on HOW Honest, Open and Willing you are to look at yourself, to be accountable for yourself, and to take different action in taking what you discover into your daily life.

Know I will be with you on your journey, gently championing you. 

Professional experience

I set up private practice in 2014 and have accumulated over 10,000 client hours. I feel deeply humbled writing that as each one of those hours represents a person who chose to trust me with something real.

Alongside my private work I had the privilege of volunteering as a counsellor at Sam Beare Hospice in Weybridge, supporting family members experiencing loss. I also gained experience working at RASASC (Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Centre in Guildford).

I hold a current DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) which enables me to work with vulnerable adults.

I am a proud accredited member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.

You can find out more on the BACP website.

Qualifications

Individual qualifications

• BACP Accredited Counsellor and Psychotherapist (2017)
• BA (Hons) Degree in Counselling, University of Greenwich (2015)
• FdSc Degree in Integrative Counselling, University of Greenwich (2014)
• NCFE Level 3 — Counselling Skills and Theory (2012)
• NCFE Level 2 — Counselling Skills (2012)
• NCFE Level 1 — Interpersonal Skills (2011)

Couple and relationship qualifications

• Advanced Certificate in Relationship Therapy, COSRT (2020)
• Graduate of The Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, The Couples Institute — integrating Attachment Theory, Differentiation Theory and Neuroscience under Ellyn Bader PhD (2022)
• Relational Life Therapy, Level 1 (2025)

Online therapy qualifications

• How to Work Safely and Ethically with Online Clients
• Moving Your Practice Online, Online Therapy Institute
• How to do Counselling Online, Open University and BACP

Specialist training

Over the years I have undertaken extensive specialist training across a wide range of areas. Some of the key themes include:

Attachment, trauma and shame

Training with Linda Cundy, Sir Richard Bowlby, Janina Fisher, Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Christiane Sanderson and Dan Siegel.  Covering avoidant and anxious attachment, shame, somatic experiencing, trauma and the body, and the neurobiology underpinning relational patterns.

Couple and relationship work

Extensive training COSRT certified including affairs, communication, conflict, intimacy, sex and ageing, and meeting partners' needs. Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, and training with Dr Gabor Maté and Esther Perel on relationships as mirrors of trauma.

Loss, bereavement and grief

Training with David Kessler, BACP, and across multiple grief models including Worden, Tonkin, Stroebe and Schut and Kubler-Ross.

Alcohol, food and addiction

Informed by 12 step work, Dr Gabor Maté, BACP, with specialist training on binge eating disorder, food addiction, pornography addiction and the underlying causes of addictive patterns.

Domestic abuse and coercive control

Training with Christiane Sanderson, Professor Evan Stark and others covering domestic abuse, coercive control, sexual trauma and working with survivors.

I significantly exceed the BACP's recommended minimums of 30 hours CPD per year and 90 minutes of supervision per month. Believing there is always much more to learn.

My Philosophy

Accredited to Gandhi are the words "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

I firmly believe that with the right conditions, we can all grow and live a fulfilling, contented life with healthy connecting relationships. Not perfectly. Not without difficulty. But healable. Authentically as ourselves.

Because we get injured in relationship and we heal in relationship.

Contact

Please click here to contact me directly from this website.

Email: harmoniouscounselling@gmail.com

Telephone 07941 305511
My answering machine is confidential.
Please note:- If your number is not familiar to me, and you do not leave a message, I will not call you back as I am unaware of your personal circumstances. 

Text / WhatsApp 07941 305511