Sudeva Tim Hawkes – Counselling in Torquay

Hello. You know, the main thing that determines whether or not counselling or psychotherapy is successful is trust. The research has found that when the client and the therapist connect and get on well together, then the work is successful. It doesn't matter so much what techniques are being used. So that's the first question for you. is do you feel that the person you're approaching for counselling is someone you can get on with, someone you can feel safe with, someone you're prepared to trust with your innermost world. So, if you're ready to go that far, then I'll tell you a little bit more about how I work. My way of doing things is to make sure that you have the tools in your hands so that you're not just dependent on coming along for sessions, but you begin to feel, oh yes, I know how to do this. I know how to manage things. And then there's many, many different approaches, obviously also depending what your issues are. To name a couple, if what's going on for you is anxiety and What that means essentially is that your system is always on too high a level of tension. It needs to drop down to a more base level. It means you've learned to look on the world as a dangerous place, which to some extent makes sense, but when you're caught in that all the time, it's a problem. When you're crossing the road, You want to be more tensed up than when you're sitting at home comfortably. And if you've experienced trauma, be it childhood trauma or a shock trauma such as a car accident, actually that's a similar thing. Again, you've learned that you have to be on a high level of stress all the time. It's held in the body. It's held in the body memory. And there's a wonderful technique called somatic experiencing that can release these body held tensions without you actually having to dig back into painful memories, which obviously is something we can talk about in the session. So if you're interested, you are welcome to contact me for a 20 minute intake session that's free of charge. And that gives you the opportunity to find out a bit more about what I do and for me to find out a bit more about you and see if we both think we can work together. So thanks for listening and I hope to see you.

Oh, you know, the first thing when you're looking for a counselor is deciding if you're going to get on with this person. It sounds pretty obvious, but that's what predicts whether or not the counseling, the therapy is going to work. Do you feel good with this person? Can you trust them? Can you open up to them? So if you've got a yes so far, then we can continue and I can tell you a little bit about how I work. First thing for me is that you, the client, are going to take home tools that you can use. So it's not just like you have a therapy session and wait for next time, but you have something you can use at home in the meantime. And there's a lot of techniques we can use but the essence of them all is being interested my interest in you supporting your interest in yourself because when you start looking at what's going on looking inside then changes can start to happen and that's going to be the case whether the issues you're dealing with are anxiety depression, ADHD or perhaps childhood trauma or shock trauma but in any of these cases it needs support for you to look into what's actually going on understanding that and just to give one simple example say we're talking about anxiety or trauma What that in effect means is that the baseline for tension in the system is too high and what's needed is for it to relax. This can also be called hypervigilance. It's like the example would be you're walking along a track and something dangerous appears. Might be a snake might be you come to a road and there's a car but there's something dangerous and your tension levels are supposed to go up but then they're supposed to drop down again and when they don't that's when we want to start doing some work on the underlying factors and these tensions are held primarily in the body So you don't necessarily have to spend a lot of time delving into unpleasant past memories. It's more like getting the feeling of, where is this tension held? Oh yeah, there it is. Again, it's getting interested. It's making friends with it. That's what supports letting it go. So if this is sounding somewhat interesting, then you're very welcome to book a 20 to 25 minute free intake appointment where we get to know each other a bit, where we talk about what you need, whether we'd be a good fit. And if so, then we can progress to counseling sessions. So I'm hoping to see you or hear from you soon.