Kristine Sampson

I can be fairly flexible when it comes to on-line and telephone work and can offer some sessions in the evening and at weekends. I am available for face-to-face sessions on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and evenings in Uxbridge. Please do contact me to arrange an initial telephone consultation where you can perhaps tell me a little more about yourself and what you are looking for. We can discuss practical arrangements by email or during an initial call.

Over thirty years ago, I studied Sociology at Liverpool Polytechnic. The curriculum immersed students in the vast diversity of human experience. I studied avidly, and gained understanding of centuries of power struggles. I felt the pain of oppression and endless inequality, and I was uplifted by the courageous, collective cries for freedom and emancipation from different groups of people. I got so much more than a degree, it was a life shaping, mind expanding experience. My early choice of career, working with people with learning disabilities, deepened and personalised my understanding of the struggles of people whose difference from others in our society, can so often be devalued rather than embraced and celebrated. More importantly, I was able to appreciate at close quarters the power and determination of the human spirit, as I saw my clients demand acceptance and upliftment and overcome many challenges to create positive change for themselves and others.

After twenty years of therapeutic experience with a richly diverse client base, steeped in the nuanced, individuality of each new client who comes my way, I feel this appreciation has been etched into my DNA!

I believe that when you choose to have counselling sessions you gain a valuable opportunity to explore your unique, sometimes complex individuality, in the context of the often even more complex, dynamic interplay of external family, relational, and societal factors that frame your life experience.

For my master’s research, I explored the relational dynamics which create a sense of safety for counselling clients. My findings pointed to the phenomenal potential for self-exploration and change created when this sense of safety is achieved in therapy. I focus on creating this climate for safe relating, attuning to the needs of my clients in order to facilitate the freedom of expression which allows you to bring more aspects of yourself into the therapeutic space. The words, the gesture, the emphasis are all important. And once in the flow of this empathic understanding, new insights and perspectives begin to emerge. The words and the dialogue also do something important. When the right, sometimes challenging, questions, are asked at the right time, limitations in your thinking can be unblocked, gaps bridged and new connections and pathways for change, in thinking and living created.

Alongside this relational, here and now focus, I integrate aspects of psychodynamic therapy,with an emphasis on the power of unconscious influences and earlier development factors on our behaviour and motivation in the present. I believe there is power in knowing more of ourselves, in coming to embrace and understand more of our complexity and depth. From a position of self-knowledge and understanding, I believe we can gain confidence, take control of our lives and achieve greater fulfilment.

The first session is an opportunity for clients to meet their counsellor and to begin to look at what they want to gain from their sessions.  I tune my first session to the needs of each client, some people needing a little prompting and encouraging while others are happy to take the floor and clearly out-line their hopes, expectations and goals.  One size doesn't fit all but it I always find it is a rewarding conversation.