Kate Heavey BA (Hons) FdSc BACP (Accredited) - Supporting trainee counsellors online, across the UK and in Alfold, Cranleigh, Surrey.
Personal therapy for trainee counsellors — a safe, supportive and clinically informed space.
A word as you start out....
Congratulations!!
You are on a course that will change your life.
I remember being very nervous and not knowing what was about to unfold. Our tutor on the first day said something that has stayed with me ever since, ‘we will strip you down, yet we will build you up.' That sounded scary. And hopeful. Both at once.
What I can say with certainty, through my own lived experience, and having worked with trainee counsellors for over ten years, that lightbulb moments are real. Growth is real. And, in all honesty, the person you will become through your training is someone you may cannot quite be able to imagine, yet! And that genuinely is the exciting part. To coin Carl Rogers book title ‘On Becoming a Person’.
What I offer
Therapy for trainee counsellors is no different to any client.
It is a confidential space for you to be you.
A place to be supported with all that life brings up for you.
Where you are encouraged to understand your own patterns, history, and embrace your ways of being.
A place for you to embrace being authentically you.
I offer experience as I have had the pleasure of working with trainee counsellors from colleges and universities across the UK, including online with students in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, York and beyond. Online working means wherever you are based, we can work together, if your course allows.
And, once you qualify, I will continue to support you as you need it. Continuing to work with you as you grow your own practice. Guiding you through some of the rabbit holes that may come as we help you avoid them together.
Colleges and Universities tend to want proof of your therapy hours and your organisation will require a document to be signed. This is the only document I sign. Your sessions are as confidential as those of any other client, upholding your right to autonomy so I sign the number of the sessions yet I will not reveal details of your sessions.
My qualifications and experience
I am a BACP Accredited counsellor and psychotherapist with over 10,000 therapy hours and more than a decade in private practice. BACP member number 093164, accredited 2017.
My core model is Clarkson's Five Relational, which falls under the integrative umbrella. I gained a Foundation Degree with merit and a BA (Hons) in Counselling from the University of Greenwich. I have additionally trained extensively in couple and relationship therapy, grief and loss, trauma, shame, addiction and attachment.
I significantly exceed the BACP's recommended 30 hours of CPD per year as our field expands every year and there is always more to learn.
Find out more about me and my full training.
My Therapeutic Model is Clarkson's Five Relational
Briefly sharing the counselling model that underpins my work. I am appreciative, to someone reading this from the offset, this may feel overwhelming. Like any training, it is integrated into a way of being which is palatable.
The Working Alliance
The bridge for all counselling and psychotherapy. It holds the counsellor and client relationship and is the ground on which both stand to look back, look forward, and into what is happening right now. Its components are honest communication, trust, safety, security, consistency, realness, equality and support.
Transference and Countertransference
I have a saying — show me the boy, girl or young person and I will show you the man, woman or adult. What comes into therapy is transferred from our past, whether that is patterns of relating, value systems, or ways of being in the world. It is through the therapeutic relationship that awareness develops and the work begins.
With regard to my own countertransference — reactive countertransference coming from my response to what you bring, and proactive countertransference being bracketed, which may then be taken to supervision or my own counselling
I sit across from you as a fallible human being.
The Reparative Relationship
This is the re-parenting part of therapy, and the mode I find myself working in most. We have all had good enough else we would not be here yet there are parts of life experience that leave lasting impact and may contribute to less effective ways of coping. The reparative relationship encouraged movement from self-criticism and self-berating towards self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-worth. From lack of self-love to self-love. From not feeling good enough to feeling good enough.
The Person to Person
The real relationship, the you and I, is unique and not recreated anywhere else in this world. We will have a-ha moments where we truly see one another and feel genuinely met. Also termed I Thou moments by Buber. These moments create the realisation that you are able to support yourself.
An analogy as I do love an analogy or three; If I were a conductor and you the instrument, we will have learnt to play a tune together. What then happens is you are now playing your own instrument beautifully, allowing your own music to flow.
The Transpersonal Relationship
These moments truly take my breath away. A heart to heart meeting rather than a rational one. Two souls, vulnerable and transformed in a rich, deep and meaningful connection. These transpersonal moments are made possible by the safety, security and consistency of the working alliance grounded in Bowlby's theory of attachment.
As Clarkson acknowledged, these five forms of relationship are intentionally, or unintentionally, present in most approaches to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. My hope is that you will experience these moments in our counselling relationship.
My core training also incorporated Person Centred, Gestalt, Existential, Psychosynthesis, Psychodynamic, Transactional Analysis, Attachment Theory, Inner Child work and CBT. This means I can integrate different ways of working in therapy whether using psychoeducation, visualisations, genograms, family dynamics, defence responses, artwork, object relational exercises and more. This enables access both your conscious and unconscious mind and your left (logic) and right (attachment) brain to create ‘the Wise Mind’. And, we all want to be wiser!
Cost
As I am aware of the costs of training, I offer counselling students a reduced session fee.
Personal therapy is £50 per 60 minute session, face to face or online.
Please mention that you are a trainee counsellor when you get in touch.
Contact
Please click here to contact me directly.
Email: harmoniouscounselling@gmail.com
Telephone 07941 305511
My answering machine is confidential.
Please note:- If your number is not familiar, 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
Closing thought
In the words of George Eliot, "It is never too late to be what you always might have been."
You are already on your way and I would be truly delighted to be part of it.
