Your Counsellor
About Me
Hello my name is Rob Price. I am a fully qualified, and effective, Counsellor and Psychotherapist based in the beautiful town of Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. I have extensive experience working with clients with a wide range of emotional and psychological issues. I’m also a professional member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). And in addition I’m listed on their accredited register of Counsellors and Psychotherapists.
I offer effective short and long term therapy to individuals or couples. This includes working in accordance with BACP’s ‘Good Practice’ resource guides and their ‘Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions’. The Ethical Framework covers important issues concerned with ethical working such as transparency of practice and protection of client confidentiality.
How you might experience me as your Counsellor and Psychotherapist
As a Counsellor and Psychotherapist I’ve been told I’m very warm, caring, empathetic, creative and insightful. I’m also known to make extensive use of metaphors. This provides me with a means by which to increase your self-awareness, self-esteem, and sense of personal autonomy. I always try to keep you, my client, at the very centre of the therapeutic process. In this way I help and encourage you to remain true to yourself.
I believe in the importance of helping to create a safe judgement free confidential therapeutic space. This in turn helps provide you with an effective high quality therapeutic experience. I see this as being critical to effective therapy. So much so that I will endeavour to develop and maintain such relationship even from the moment we first meet. I hope you will then begin to feel completely free to be honest and open as we work together. This enables me to do my very best to help you help yourself.
I will encourage and support you to develop the confidence to explore and work through your problems. I’ll also encourage you to overcome any anxieties and feelings of vulnerability you may have. My aim is to make therapy a place in which you feel held, safe and properly supported.
Examples of effective therapeutic ‘tools’ I may employ during our work together
Helping you create effective counselling solutions for your problems is my central focus. Adopting a pragmatic approach means I make use of a wide variety of therapeutic tools, ideas and principles. Examples include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, Schema Therapy, Systems Theory, and Transactional Analysis to name just a few. In addition I make use of therapeutic questionnaires such the CORE form and the Rosenberg scale. I also use, or encourage the use, of drawings, pictures, and systems diagrams. And I often make use of internet resources as an integral part of therapy.
Some clients express an interest in spirituality or philosophy. In such cases I may draw upon spiritual or religious concepts from Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, or other religions or more generic spiritual practices. Furthermore the writings of philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry Thoreau can act as another valuable resource for our work. It’s worth emphasising that this is always lead by, and done with the intention of supporting, my client’s stated needs, beliefs and interests. Another benefit are the great insights that can be gained from such material. This all helps enhance your therapeutic experience and progress your journey to wellness. Please see helpful resources for some examples.
My guiding counselling philosophy
The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines philosophy as “a set of beliefs or an attitude to life that guides somebody’s behaviour”. As regards my own counselling philosophy it is compassion based. That is to say I want to really understand and empathise with you in your suffering. In addition I’m guided by the desire to alleviate that suffering and help you experience greater emotional and psychological good health and well-being. And as your Counsellor and Psychotherapist I’m very much concerned with taking action to facilitate you in achieving that goal.
I believe in the enormous value of helping you help yourself explore painful, confusing and uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and distressing life circumstances. It is a truely empowering thing to be really heard and understood. And it is often a necessary first step towards achieving real positive change.
I believe in having a deep respect for, and being guided by, the fact that you are the ultimate expert on your life. Consequently throughout our journey together I will express this attitude by encouraging you to trust and draw upon your own innate wisdom. Because, to paraphrase the German writer and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, once you learn to trust yourself, then you’ll really know how to live.
And I believe in the wisdom of helping you help yourself develop effective solutions to your distress. This includes a desire to help you help yourself develop solutions that are a good fit for you and your unique life circumstances. Most of all I want to help you help yourself gain the necessary skills, knowledge and insights to experience emotional and psychological good health and well-being. And to continue to do so from here on in!
For further details of how I express my philosophy therapeutically please see the counselling sessions page of this website.