LOCATION: Wilbury Road and online
AVAILABILITY: Monday daytimes, online Tuesdays & Wednesdays
PRICE: £55 per session
SPECIALISMS:
Anxiety
Perfectionism and self-esteem
Relationships and connectedness
Depression
Coping with difficult feelings
Trauma
Cultural belonging and identity issues
Post-diagnosis mental health recovery support
Co-dependency and attachment issues
Repetition of behavioural patterns
Work related challenges
Meaning of life (and stuckness) issues

Training 

Mike is an accredited member of the BACP, and has a PGDip in Humanistic Psychotherapy (distinction) from the University of Brighton. Prior to that he qualified as a Mental Health Practitioner (PGCert, NHS accredited) from the University of Sussex, which allows him to also draw on a range of established recovery focussed practises including Behavioural Activation, Solution Focussed Therapy, and Motivational interviewing.

Mike’s counselling work has been in both private practice as well as various mental health settings and charities, including Keylink, working with Health and Education professionals during the pandemic, and Pavilions (now CGL) working with significant others of those with drug and alcohol addiction.  

Mike views, as an integral part of his counselling work, his continued professional and personal development such as represented in the BACP and BPS ethical frameworks.

Approach

Experiencing and expressing difficult feelings, or patterns of behaviour, can mean very different things, requiring a receptive approach to the uniqueness you bring. In Mike’s humanistic model your choice making and agency are central, allowing him a way to connect with you in an empathic and non-judgemental way. Mike works creatively through the joint use of metaphors and Gestalt techniques to help you focus on what is presenting. Central to him is the relationship that develops at the heart of the work, allowing Mike to fully hear you and find what life is like for you, and what you need to move forward.

Mike uses a gentle challenging to support you in making new meanings which aims to support you to reach more of an explorative and deeper connection with yourself, one in which he and you can look at your lived experience in a complete, open and change-focussed way.

Anxiety

Anxiety and fearfulness, perhaps of self, of others, of physical circumstances, are some of the most distressful, and commonly felt experiences. They can become manifest in many different ways, in the mind, through being hyperaware, physically, through direct bodily sensations, or more vaguely as a felt sense.  Their meaning and origin might seem transparent or might be multi-layered and seem unclear. The approach to anxiety therefore requires to be tailor-made. Mike has an effective way of working with anxiety which includes seeing anxiety existentially as a call to search for a new and better meaning in life, a first step to a different self-actualisation and reaching for a better self-sense of authenticity. No matter what obstacles our lives have brought us, the availability of choice and thereby a potential for change or acceptance, however testing, does remain open to us.

Perfectionism and self-esteem

Perfectionism is often accompanied by a strong self-critical voice, perhaps reminding us of childhood demands about requirements to be this way. We may find that our undeliverable striving for flawlessness, or needing to be a certain way, continues to be met by self-reproach, or alternatively, by a need to put things off, in order to avoid the inner critic. Triggers can be surprisingly present where we are supposed to find relaxation or pleasure but instead find ourselves trapped by the performance metrics on our phones. Either way, this can impact on our self-esteem, and result in a hyperawareness of others’ expectations, real or imagined, and the dread of not meeting them.

Mike’s approach is to understand the particulars of your perfectionism and the ways it effects self-esteem and to gradually change the voice of the inner critic with one of self-compassion and curiosity, to replace the ‘perfect’ with the ‘good-enough’.  

Relationships and connectedness

The nature of a relationship is the nature of a connection, and connections can be to people, animals, inanimate objects, cultures or countries. Mike’s approach is that, importantly, relationships tell us something about ourselves, something we may want to explore further, or may want to change.

Challenges and distressing feelings from a relationship can come about in the formation, or maintenance of the relationship, or in the loss or estrangement of a relationship.  Although relationships are forged and experienced in the here a now, they are importantly also informed by our experiences of significant attachments in our childhood past.  
The way Mike works here is that the work itself, with you, and the bond you develop together, will also provide useful information about other relationships, old and new, that have been, or will be, formed outside of the sessions.

Other information

Prior to his couselling work Mike worked for over 20 years as an academic psychologist and senior lecturer with a research interest in lifespan development, student learning & wellbeing. Part of his role was also to manage and supervise student work placements in a wide variety of mental health and wellbeing sector roles.
 
Having grown up in The Netherlands, lived and worked for many years in different parts of Europe including Germany and Ireland, Mike has a keen interest in multi-cultural experiences and issues around belongingness. Mike is able to offer Dutch language therapy also.