Mike Swift

Hello, I'm Mike. I offer one-to-one and couples counselling for adults in central Bristol BS1, and online with clients based anywhere.

I imagine you’ve arrived here because your life is feeling hard in some way right now, and you want to feel better. ​Perhaps you want to explore a specific problem, or the space to look at your life in depth. Either way, I can offer you the support to talk things through to try and make some sense of it all.

I welcome people into my practice from all walks of life and am LGBTQIA+ affirmative.

I work relationally within the traditions of Humanistic, Psychodynamic, and Existential therapy. By this I mean that my primary aim is to form a genuine relationship with you while seeking to understand in as much detail and depth as possible your subjective experience and the potential origins of this. It's through a real, person-to-person relationship, and deep exploration of your experience, that the relief, change and growth you want often occurs. I believe in the power of compassion and how a holding relationship with a therapist can help to increase self-compassion, which I see as a fundamental aspect of wellbeing. We are often our own worst critic.

I will offer my real responses to what you bring, which can sometimes be challenging, but I will only do so gently, in the spirit of your growth and healing.

I work within a theoretical framework of how we are shaped by our past experience. Neuroscience now confirms that our early experience literally shapes our brain and its neural pathways, encoding responses and patterns of behaviour that can re-occur throughout life. The counselling I offer might be a place for you to explore your own patterns of behaviour. Insight puts us in a better position to choose more fulfilling ways of being.

Information for couples counselling:

I think it's important to really acknowledge that relationships are hard work. I imagine if you're looking for couples counselling, things between you and your partner are not working in some sense. Perhaps the feelings you once had have changed. Perhaps this has built slowly over time, or a life transition or event has brought things to a head. Either way - something needs to change between you. Perhaps you're at the stage where it's either - things have to improve, or you separate. Commonly, the situation between a couple has reached crisis point by the time couples counselling is sought.

If your desire to stay together is still strong, and you are willing to work at it, my goal as a couples therapist is to notice and to intervene in the patterns and shapes that you are co-creating, to assist you as a couple to re-establish communication and empathy where is has broken down.

Often things from the past on both sides come up and end up intermingling in ways that get in the way of the relationship you want. Couples counselling can be a space to start exploring and unpicking these tangles and knots. This can be hard work, and will often require time and commitment to the process. My commitment is to be reliable, fully present and 'in' the process with you.

​If you would both like to give it a go, I suggest that we meet for a full initial session in order to get a good sense of what it is like working together. 

What to expect in the intro session

The intro session is a chance to meet and see what it might be like to work together, for me to begin to understand what's going on for you and whether I can help. I will ask you to tell me what has brought you to counselling and you are welcome to ask me any questions you may have.

​Often, people are carrying a great deal as they enter into counselling. Although there are some things I will need to ask in the intro session, it is still very much your time and many people find even the first hour of counselling helpful.

​I will ask you what you would like to get from counselling eg, to feel less anxious, to feel happier within yourself, to be less self-critical, to be more confident, to move on from a break-up, to process a bereavement. If you don't know what you would like to get from counselling, that's fine too and completely normal. Defining what the problem is might be part of the work we do.

​Perhaps you are aware of how things that have happened in the past are affecting you now? In the intro session, I might also invite you to tell me a little about your personal history. Essentially, I will just want to start to get to know you.

​Near the end of the intro session, we will discuss how you have found talking with me and whether you would like to continue. If you are unsure you are welcome to take a few days to think about it and let me know. Finding the right therapist is crucial.