Individual Therapy

Individual Therapy & Counselling

A confidential hour that belongs entirely to you — to think out loud, to make sense of what is happening, and to work out what you want to do about it.

Arrange a free 15-minute callCall 07395 854051
A single armchair and side table in a warm, softly lit therapy room in Chelmsford.

  • Session length

    50 minutes

  • How it runs

    In person or online

  • Typical course

    Often 6–12 sessions

  • First step

    A free 15-minute call

Who this is for

Where people usually are when they get in touch

Most people do not arrive at therapy at the beginning of a problem. They arrive after months or years of managing it privately, at the point where the managing has itself become exhausting. That is a completely ordinary way to come, and it is not a sign that you have left it too late.

Individual therapy is a regular, protected appointment with one person whose only job in that hour is to understand what is happening for you. There is no agenda to get through and no correct way to use the time. Some sessions are a careful piece of work on a specific pattern. Others are simply the first time in a fortnight that you have said anything true out loud.

The work is collaborative rather than instructional. You are the authority on your own life; the therapist brings a structured way of looking at it, some well-evidenced tools, and the willingness to stay with the parts that other people find difficult to hear.

A person's hands resting loosely in their lap during a therapy session.

This is often the right service when

  • You are still functioning — work, school run, the group chat — but the effort that takes has quietly become enormous.
  • You wake at four in the morning and the same thought is already waiting for you.
  • Something happened months or years ago that you have never said out loud to anyone, including the people closest to you.
  • You have been the reliable one for so long that you genuinely no longer know what you want.
  • A relationship ended, or someone died, and the people around you have started behaving as though you should be over it.
  • You can see yourself drinking a bit more, eating less, scrolling until two in the morning — and being able to see it somehow makes it worse.
  • Your GP has offered medication and you would like to work on the underlying pattern alongside it.
  • Nothing is obviously wrong, and that is exactly the thing that is bothering you.

Common ground

What people bring to this work

Not an exhaustive list, and you do not need a label to book a session. If what you are carrying is not named here, say so on the first call and we will tell you honestly whether this is the right place.

  • Anxiety, persistent worry and overthinking
  • Panic attacks and physical symptoms of anxiety
  • Low mood and depression
  • Work-related stress and burnout
  • Low self-esteem and harsh self-criticism
  • Bereavement, grief and anticipatory loss
  • The end of a relationship or a marriage
  • Trauma and distressing past experiences
  • Anger that arrives faster than you can think
  • Health anxiety and fear of illness
  • Life transitions — new parenthood, redundancy, retirement, an empty house
  • Loneliness, social anxiety and the fear of being found out

The approach

The models this work draws on

No single model fits everyone, and nothing here is applied from a manual. These are the established approaches the work draws on, described plainly so you can see what you are agreeing to.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)

CBT works with the loop between what you think, how your body responds, what you feel and what you then do — because changing any one of those tends to move the others. Sessions are structured and focused on the present, and usually involve trying something out between appointments rather than only talking. NICE guidance recommends CBT as a first-line psychological treatment for depression and for the anxiety disorders in adults, which is why it is often where we begin.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)

ACT starts from a different angle: rather than arguing with a difficult thought, you learn to hold it more lightly and to stop letting it decide what you do. Alongside that, we get specific about what actually matters to you — not goals, but the sort of person you want to be in the situations you cannot avoid. It is often the more useful frame when the struggle to control anxiety has itself become the main problem.

Person-centred counselling

Developed from the work of Carl Rogers, this approach treats the relationship itself as the active ingredient rather than any particular technique. The therapist offers genuine attention, an honest presence and no judgement, on the premise that people move towards their own answers when they are properly heard rather than directed. It is the register we return to whenever being understood matters more than being given a strategy.

Solution-focused practice

Developed by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg, solution-focused work spends little time on the history of a problem and a great deal on the exceptions — the days it is less severe, and what was different about them. Scaling questions and a detailed description of a preferred future do most of the work. It suits shorter pieces of work and people who would rather build than excavate.

Which of these gets used, and in what proportion, is decided with you rather than for you. You can ask at any point why a particular approach is being taken, and you should expect a straight answer.

What happens

From the first phone call to the last session

There are no surprises built into this process. Here is the whole sequence, in order.

  1. A free 15-minute call

    Before anything is booked, we speak briefly on the phone. You describe what is going on in whatever words you have; we say honestly whether this is the right service, and if it is not, we point you towards something that fits better. Nothing is charged and nothing is committed.

  2. The first session — getting the shape of it

    The first appointment is mostly listening. We cover what brought you now rather than last year, what you have already tried, what is happening in your body and your sleep, and who is around you. We also go through confidentiality, records and the limited circumstances in which it could be broken, in writing and before you begin — not afterwards.

  3. Agreeing what we are working on

    By the second or third session we set out a shared understanding of the pattern: what triggers it, what keeps it going, and what a meaningful change would actually look like in your week. This is written in plain language, it belongs to you, and it can be rewritten whenever it stops fitting.

  4. The working sessions

    Weekly to begin with, because momentum matters early on. Sessions mix talking things through with practical work — noticing thoughts, testing beliefs against evidence, sitting with feelings you have been outrunning, rehearsing a conversation you need to have. Some weeks there is something to try in between; there is never homework for its own sake.

  5. Reviewing, and ending well

    Every few sessions we stop and ask whether this is helping, honestly. Endings are planned rather than drifted into, and often involve spacing sessions out before stopping altogether. You can end at any point, and you can come back later without starting from the beginning.

A window and bookshelf in the Chelmsford consulting room, lit by a lamp on a grey afternoon.

What the room is like

No couch, no clipboard, no analysis you did not ask for

The consulting room in Chelmsford is a quiet, ordinary room with comfortable chairs, decent light and a door that closes properly. You will not be asked to lie down, you will not be diagnosed, and nothing you say will be written down while you are speaking.

People often expect to be assessed and instead find themselves in a conversation. The structure is real — there is a direction to the work and a reason for the questions — but it should feel like being taken seriously by an adult, not like being processed.

If travelling is difficult, online sessions run on the same footing: the same length, the same continuity, the same therapist. What matters is that you are somewhere you can speak without being overheard, which is worth planning properly before the first appointment.

Direction of travel

What people often work towards

These are the changes people commonly aim for in this work. They are not promises, and no honest practitioner can guarantee any of them — progress depends on what you bring, what is going on around you, and time.

  • Recognising the pattern earlier — catching the spiral at step two rather than step nine
  • Language for what you feel, which makes it possible to ask for what you need
  • A more accurate relationship with your own thoughts, rather than a war with them
  • Sleep that is less often hijacked at four in the morning
  • Boundaries that hold, without a two-week aftershock of guilt
  • Grief that has somewhere to go, instead of being carried silently
  • A clearer sense of what you actually want from work, from people, from the next year
A person walking a wide open path at the edge of a field in early morning light.

Being straight with you

Therapy is not a quick fix and it is not always comfortable. Some weeks you will leave feeling lighter; some weeks you will have gone near something painful and will feel tired rather than better. Progress is usually uneven. If after a fair number of sessions the work is not helping, we will say so and help you find something that might.

See urgent help and 24-hour support lines

Questions

Individual Therapy: the questions people ask first

The things people most often want to know before booking. If yours is not here, ask it on the free call — no question is too small or too awkward.

How many sessions will I need?

Nobody can tell you honestly at the outset, and be cautious of anyone who does. A focused piece of work on a specific difficulty — a phobia, a decision, a recent bereavement — often runs to six or twelve sessions. Longer-standing patterns, particularly those rooted in early experience, usually take longer. We review together every few sessions so that the length of the work is a shared decision rather than a surprise.

Is it confidential? Will my GP or my employer be told?

What you say stays in the room. Nothing is shared with your GP, your employer, your family or your insurer without your written consent. There are narrow legal and ethical exceptions — a serious and immediate risk to your life or someone else's, a child or vulnerable adult at risk of harm, certain terrorism and money-laundering disclosures, or a court order — and these are explained to you in writing before your first session so you always know where the edges are.

What if I get there and cannot think of anything to say?

That happens often, and it is not a failure of the session. Silence is allowed, and part of the therapist's job is to help you find a way in without interrogating you. If it is easier, bring the thing you nearly cancelled over, or the sentence you rehearsed in the car. Starting badly is still starting.

Can I have therapy while I am taking antidepressants?

Yes. Medication and talking therapy are commonly used alongside one another, and for some difficulties the combination is what makes progress possible. Decisions about prescribing, changing or stopping medication rest entirely with your GP or psychiatrist — a counsellor cannot and should not advise on that. Please do not stop or alter medication because therapy seems to be helping, without speaking to the prescriber first.

Is online therapy as useful as being in the room?

For most of the difficulties listed on this page, online sessions work well, and for some people they work better — no traffic on the A12, no waiting room, and the session happens in a place that already feels safe. The important variables are a private space where you will not be overheard, a stable connection, and treating it as a real appointment rather than something to take while driving. In-person work can suit better where trauma, dissociation or significant risk is part of the picture, and we would discuss that with you directly.

What if I do not feel it is working?

Say so. That conversation is a legitimate and useful part of therapy, not a complaint about the service, and a good therapist will want to hear it rather than be protected from it. Sometimes it means adjusting the approach, sometimes it means the focus is wrong, and sometimes it means a different therapist or a different kind of help would serve you better. We would rather help you find that than keep an appointment slot filled.

More general questions — about confidentiality, records, insurance and how appointments are booked — are answered on the frequently asked questions page.

Related

If this is not quite the right fit

People often start in one service and move to another, or do two in sequence. Nothing about that is unusual.

Couples & Relationship Therapy

Two people, one room, and enough structure that the conversation you keep failing to have can finally happen without it turning into the same argument.

Read about couples therapy

Life Coaching

Forward-facing, practical work for people who are not unwell but are stuck — with a direction to choose, a habit to break, or a version of their life they keep postponing.

Read about life coaching

See all four services compared

Getting started

Start with a conversation, not a commitment

Fifteen minutes on the phone is usually enough to work out whether individual therapy is the right place to begin. There is no charge for it and nothing to sign afterwards.

Book a first sessionCall 07395 854051

Enquiries are answered within one working day. This is a planned-appointment service and not a crisis line — if you need help now, please use the urgent help page.

A front door standing slightly open with a warm light on in the hallway beyond.