Claire Anderson

I offer evening and daytime sessions for individual adults and couples.

Perhaps you are looking to come to therapy at a time of crisis, or you may have been feeling for some time that things don't seem right, but you can't make sense of what it is that is stopping you from feeling happy and fulfilled? I believe that how we experience the world and other people can be shaped by our earlier experiences, often those we had in childhood. How family members responded to our distress, anger, confusion, joy and love might determine how, as adults, we respond to others, and how puzzled we can be by how others treat us.

This in turn might lead us to develop strategies to cope with distress and other difficulties. These become ingrained, often unconscious, patterns of thinking and acting. We can operate day to day without actually being aware of them. They contribute, for example, to our choice of partners and friends, our (sometimes unhelpful, even destructive) behaviours and ways of managing our feelings. Examples of these unhelpful coping mechanisms can include anger, anxiety, feeling depressed, drinking too much and using dugs. Or we might try to keep things under control by having really high standards, striving to be perfect, which leads us to feeling down when we can't keep up. 

By working with you I would hope to help you gain a deeper understanding of yourself as well as relationships with others and find alternative, healthier coping strategies.

I am trained and experienced in working with people who have had difficult experiences, sometimes early in life. Some may have had parents who were depressed or struggling with their own issues.  I aim to help you explore difficult experiences and feelings, perhaps linked to issues such as anger, anxiety, depression, excessive worry, low self-esteem, perfectionism, OCD, panic attacks, difficulties in making or sustaining relationships and learn how to manage them more effectively.

An understanding of how we relate to one another within the therapeutic relationship becomes a way of understanding other relationships and experiences. I aim to help you explore and develop a stronger sense of yourself that can lead to making meaningful changes and a more fulfilling, creative way of being in the world at large.

I offer counselling for those who are perhaps seeking an exploration of their past by offering a psychoanalytic approach as well as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for people who might want to work on a more time-limited basis and for certain problems and disorders where research has shown it to be effective. I am also a qualified EMDR therapist specialising in  PTSD and complex trauma.

During an initial consultation session, I would like to talk to you about your current situation and explore what has prompted you to come to counselling at this particular point in your life. This allows for me to get to know something about your background and history, including previous experiences of therapy or counselling. It is very important for you to feel comfortable with me, and this initial session gives us the opportunity to consider whether I am the right person to help you and if this type of therapy would be useful to you.