Madeleine Coates

I offer counselling for couples and individuals on Tuesday's and Wednesday's.

Counselling begins with fixed weekly appointments. As we work through issues it can be beneficial to reduce the frequency of the appointment in some cases and is subject to availability of fortnightly appointments or ad hoc sessions.

I also work flexibly with those who work irregular hours; I send a schedule of availability for the following weeks appointments to clients every Thursday and they are booked on a first return basis.

For availability see here - https://www.maddycoates.com/availability

I am a Relate trained counsellor offering relationship therapy to couples and individuals. I support clients to deal with many issues such as  patterns of conflict, communication challenges, parental differences, feelings about roles and responsibilities, beliefs from childhood and other difficult life obstacles.

Personal history can lead to behaviours that many struggle to cope with. These can become intertwined in current or recent relationships and prevent achieving resolutions. I can support you through the process of unravelling the underlying issues and to move on.

Conflict can be a difficult obstacle to overcome for couples and individuals and I support them to examine a new way of relating and managing differences. In particular betrayals can be difficult to overcome or communicate on, I can provide you with the space and opportunity to explore the impact of a betrayal.

Differences can manifest as noisy and confrontational or silent and distant and I see many versions, each a unique blend of the individuals past and present experience of life.

I listen to your story and from this I use systemic, psychodynamic and person centred methods to look at the ways in which you can work towards your goals such as improved communication, reducing rows, resolving parenting issues, recovering from a betrayal or loss, understanding repeated unhelpful behaviours.

Research shows that many life difficulties have a relationship breakdown as the origin and so by attending to your relationship you are looking after your future self.

An initial phone call of 15 minutes will be held free of charge to enable you to explore if counselling with me feels like a suitable option for you. 

The first session is an assessment of your issues that you feel you face, a decision on the best help for you which could be couple counselling, individual counselling or recommendation to another service. The next steps include some goal setting to clarify what we are working on together and an outline of how we will review this.

This session will also set out the length and frequency of the sessions. Most commonly sessions are 50 minutes long but I do recognise that in some circumstances stories can be difficult to tell and that extended sessions may be necessary. An extended session is 75 minutes duration.