Matt Hancocks

About Counselling & Psychotherapy

What is psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy aims to help clients gain insight into their difficulties or distress, establish a greater understanding of their motivation, and enable them to find more appropriate ways of coping or bring about changes in their thinking and behaviour.

Psychotherapy involves exploring feelings, beliefs, thoughts and relevant events, sometimes from childhood and personal history, in a structured way with someone trained to help you do it safely.

Depending on the nature of your problem, therapy can be short or long term. Sessions can be provided for adults, and adolescents on a one-to-one basis, or for couples, families and within groups whose members share similar problems.

What happens during psychotherapy?

Every session is different because every client is different, as are their problems. I will encourage you to talk and explore, in a structured way, your feelings and experiences.

Depending on your background and inclinations we may use particular techniques as part of our exploration - for example, using art, imaging, dream or movement work.

Psychotherapy is not a magical cure, it is a process to help you find the capacity for improvement within yourself.

What is the difference between counselling and psychotherapy?

Different people use the words counselling and psychotherapy in different ways, so there is no commonly agreed definition. There is a general understanding that a psychotherapist can work with a wider range of clients or patients and can offer more in-depth work where appropriate, but this is more down to individual experience etc.

My accreditation is with UKCP, who believe the difference lies in the length and depth of training involved and in the quality of the relationship between the client and therapist. UKCP-registered psychotherapists are trained to Masters level and beyond.

UKCP registers psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors. Psychotherapeutic counsellors are counsellors who have received more in-depth training than that undertaken by most counsellors. UKCP's training standards for both qualifications seek to ensure that UKCP registrants are competent to practice to the highest standards.

What is psychotherapeutic counselling?

Psychotherapeutic Counselling is distinguished from traditional counselling by its emphasis on the co-creation of an in-depth therapeutic relationship; wherein the suffering human being is viewed holistically, body, mind and soul and in the context of a concrete life situation and developmental stage. When training as a psychotherapeutic counsellor there is particular reference to establishing and maintaining the therapeutic relationship, which is the central factor in the work

What Conditions Can it Help?

Psychotherapy has helped many people deal with mental health issues or emotional distress, which can be experienced in many ways including:

Whether psychotherapy can help you will depend largely upon the quality of the relationship between you and your therapist. For this reason, for fixed term or long term work (excluding MOT 3 session work), I offer the first exploratory session for a reduced fee. This allows both of us to decide whether we feel we can work together.