Counselling or Psychotherapy - what's the difference?

 

My short answer is: therapy goes deeper, and that means it's likely to take longer.

 

In counselling we may focus on a specific issue, clarifying your thoughts and feelings around it, identifying and mobilising the resources you can bring to deal with it. When we need more time to identify what your resources are, or when there may be blockages and resistances getting in the way of you accessing them, we can find ourselves in a longer process of healing that we would call therapy.

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As this might suggest, there isn't a clear line between the two approaches - things we discover in counselling may lead us into the 'deeper' exploration of therapy, and what happens in a therapy session isn't likely to look very different to counselling.

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So, in practice, it's mainly a matter of how much time you need. If you contact me for an initial consultation, we'll look at what issues you're wanting to work on and agree an initial number of meetings, which we will review regularly as we move forward. My commitment to you includes that you will always be in control of the pace, depth and duration of our work together.

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