Heidi Ellis

'The first step to making change is deciding that you no longer want to be where you are.'

People are drawn to counselling for many different reasons. Life can often be challenging and can leave you feeling alone and not knowing where you can go to be heard, understood or supported. This in turn can leave you feeling anxious, stressed, down, afraid or unable to do what you want to do, and be who you want to be. Counselling can help support you through these difficult times and changes in your life, for example through bereavement, loss of a relationship, trauma, abuse, anxiety, relationship problems, stress or depression.

Coming to counselling is a way of exploring and working through the issues that you are facing, enabling you to develop a deeper self-awareness and ability to make sense of your life. You are the expert of your life, no one else, and by listening to you, working alongside you and offering you a confidential, non-judgemental and empathic space, this can help you to feel safe to explore what you are thinking, feeling and experiencing. This therapeutic relationship can allow you to explore your life in a way that you may not have been able to before and may help you with understanding why you have been feeling the way you do and to make changes in order to move forward.

I am professionally trained and work as an integrative psychotherapist, which means that I am able to draw on a number of different approaches, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), person centred, humanistic and behavioural, so that the counselling approach is tailored for you. I work face to face and I am also a qualified online and telephone counsellor. 

Training, qualifications & experience

• Certificate in Online & Telephone Counselling
  
• Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional (CCATP)
  
• Advanced Professional Diploma in Psychotherapeutic Counselling
• Advanced Diploma in Psychotherapeutic Counselling
  
• Diploma in Psychotherapeutic Counselling
  
• Awareness in Bereavement Care Foundation Course
  
• BSc (Hons) Psychology and Criminology
  

I attend regular continued professional development training courses to develop my experience and practice. I have specialist training and experience in providing support for anxiety, trauma, abuse and bereavement.

Accredited registrant of the National Counselling Society (MNCS Accred).

Registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (MBACP). I abide by the BACP ethical framework and requirements for continuing professional development and supervision.

Member of the association for counselling and therapy online (ACTO).

As well as being in private practice, I am an associate with NTAPS working with clients who have experienced trauma, using a short-term trauma focused CBT approach.

I am also a volunteer counsellor with the Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Centre (RASASC), as well as working with clients referred to me by RASASC in my private practice.

I also worked for Cruse as a bereavement volunteer, where I worked with adults on both a one-to-one basis and facilitated group work, and volunteered as a counsellor with the NHS Surrey & Borders Partnership Youth Counselling Service, part of Mindsight Surrey CAMHS which offers short term counselling to 12 to 24 year olds.