Leanne Presland

I am currently open to new counselling referrals.

Appointments can be in person, via telephone or teams video call.  

My private practice days are as follows:

Tuesday and Wednesday day time

Weekday early evenings 

Saturday mornings - available on request 

I provide in person support for people living in and around Peterborough, including Huntingdon and Cambridge, Wisbech and King's Lynn and London. 

If you are looking to work together remotely, I'm happy to work with anyone based in the UK. 

Please feel free to contact me if you wish to discuss appointments. I aim to offer flexibility where I can, as I am aware counselling is a big commitment and lives are busy things - so please ask if you have any questions.

After all this time couselling to me is still a little bit of magic, it can be hard to explain and is best to be felt.

I have been working in NHS mental health settings since 2009, therapeutically within IAPT services since 2014 and in private practice since 2020. Over this time I have moved from a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy perspective to a more emotion focused, relational and person centered way of working. This means that I look to work along side you, I don't lead the therapy as I feel it's important we go where you want. My perspective is you have your own answers and given the right conditions you will be able to hear them from within yourself.

I look to offer a safe, contained and compassionate space for you to feel heard and valued, to feel safe to listen to yourself and to bring those things into our therapeutic relationship.  The therapeutic relationship can offer you a different way of being with yourself, a different way of being with your emotions than you may have experienced up untill now, and so a different way of being in the world.

I work 'human to human', with all which that contains. I wouldn't say I have a specialist area. Everyone's experience is individual and beautifully complex (as we humans are!), with my passion being to build a meaningful and supportive therapeutic relationship with the person I am working with. 

I believe the therapeutic relationship is key within therapy, and finding the right person to work with is so important when looking for a therapist, or you won't go to the places you need to. I offer an initial referral appointment for us both to get sense of each other and if we think we will work well together, in addition to review appointments during therapy to ensure you are getting what you want from the sessions.

I offer appointments of 50 minutes length, or as otherwise agreed. With payment in advance of the session.

I typically look to offer weekly appointments, particularly early in therapy. Fortnightly sessions, or otherwise, are an option that I would be happy to discuss.

Therapy together can be short, medium or long term, with regular reviews of progress. 

I myself am dyslexic, which has lead me to use a mixture of both talking therapies and creative mediums to help processing when words arnt always easy to find.

My educational background is as follows:

Accredited course in Person Centered Experiential Counselling for Depression at Metanoia Institute

Level 4 Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling at Community Counsellor Training

Postgraduate certificate in Low Intensity Psychological Interventions at the University of Surrey

Masters degree in the Foundations of Clinical Psychology at Bangor University

Undergraduate degree in Psychology with Clinical Psychology at the University of Lincoln

Before setting a start date for therapy I offer a free 20-30 minute telephone referral appointment - the purpose being to get a sense of each other and how we might work together, to take down some referral information, discuss costs and session frequency and to answer any questions you may have. 

Between the referral appointment and our first session I will send you a copy of the Counselling Agreement we will discuss and both sign prior to starting work together.

Our first session together will take more of an assessment stance, with me asking more questions than I generally do within therapy, before settling into therapy over the coming weeks. Here I will be interested in the 'goals' you want to achieve in therapy and what difficulties brought you to counselling. 

We will generally look to have a review at around 6 weeks to see how you and I both feel the therapy is progressing, and  establishing how we wish to proceed if looking towards medium and longer term therapy.