Gill Jackman -- Counsellor: My approach

MY APPROACH

I’m a person-centred counsellor and think that being able to respond to how a client is actually behaving and feeling is of paramount importance. In practice this means finding their ‘mode’ — which might be thinking, feeling, visual (using art or stones, using imagination) in order to communicate with them and find a way between us of overcoming any blocks to self-expression.

The most effective way of doing this is by checking out with you what’s helpful and what’s not. Because I’ve been practicing for 25 years, I have many different ways of working to offer. Sometimes this will also involve working with transference (feelings and beliefs that just seem to have ‘appeared’ about the therapist). So perhaps ‘integrative’ (having integrated all these modes into my own approach) would be a good way to describe how I work.

I have extensive experience of working with people who have suffered abuse in the past, whether emotional, physical or sexual. I do not work with children though I’ve done a great deal of work with young people (16 and up).