Lisa Alhadeff

My standard availability is:

• Monday 12pm to 8pm, 
• Tuesday 10 am to 6 pm, 
• Friday 9 am to 6 pm.
  

When clients come to see me, they often feel like they've tried everything. They are living with difficult emotions and feelings and it's exhausting. You might be feeling hopeless, and yet somehow you need things to be easier.

I’m an integrative counsellor which means I bring a toolkit of techniques (such as talking therapy and CBT) to help you get what you need from the therapy - and if something doesn’t work for you, we move on. Being trained in a variety of techniques means that I can find ways of working together that will really work for you. I work in a trauma-informed way, and have experience with clients experiencing different types of abuse including domestic, sexual, and childhood abuse.

Perhaps your past experiences are stopping you from living in the present. If you're feeling overwhelmed, especially if you've felt that way for a long time, it's hard to know where to start. I meet you where you are, and I understand how impossible it might be to imagine feeling okay.

I have experience providing emotional support in a crisis through several years of volunteering with Samaritans, as well as a good working knowledge of the mental health services in Sheffield. This means I understand the journey to find support you have followed – and how difficult that might have been. Living with high levels of distress, anxiety or low mood can be unbearable. In therapy sessions we can take steps to make life feel easier.

We will work to make distressing feelings less painful and overwhelming, giving you space to get your sense of self back.

I do this by exploring your symptoms and experiences, tackling difficult emotions and feelings one by one. I'll creatively find ways that work for you, that might not have been obvious before.

I work in a trauma-informed way, which focusses on making sure you feel safe. That involves managing triggers and making sure that you don’t feel re-traumatised by therapy. I create a safe space in which you can be yourself without fear of judgement.

I work with overwhelming emotions that come with a variety of issues including shame, eating disorders, grief, traumatic life experiences, and dealing with mental health issues.

Together, we will explore what you need so that we can work towards you getting to where you want to be - even if that's accepting where you are right now. Throughout therapy, we will be building a toolkit to help you work through what you are currently dealing with, and equip you for the future. 

I start with a free 20-minute phone call or video call so you can get a feel for how working together would be.

If we decide to work together, I will send you some questions to complete, and my contract. We use the initial session to explore what you want to bring to therapy, and how you would like things to be. We might start to formulate a plan for our work together.