Richard Mills

I work Monday - Friday including some evenings... but not all the time! 

I see relationship as at the heart of life, whether relationship with others or ourselves, so my style is relational, informed by psychodynamic, Gestalt and person-centred methods. 
 

We see a tree… and maybe we hear it, taste, smell or feel it. We see how it moves, changes, sounds; and maybe we feel like we know it.

In therapy we can look at all that… and it’s not a bad idea, to see how we see ourselves whether in hibernation or full sway, moist or dry, green or brown.

But that’s HALF the story: there’s another chunk below those branches and leaves.

The past

We are occupied – and many of us very busy – doing our life right here, right now, and whilst we like to think we have some control over our daily decisions, actions and words, the past that we experienced all those years ago a) influences us, and b) supports us.

Some folks say: ‘I don’t want to dwell in the past’. Well, neither do I!

What’s helpful in therapy is to acknowledge and explore the past in the safety of the therapy room: it can help us not only understand who we are but moreover avoid trying to push it away, a futile pursuit.

The subconscious

Yes, you’ve got one! The tantalising beauty of the unconscious is that it is never fully ‘understandable’ or ‘nailed’. It pops up in dreams, slips of the tongue (‘I mis-spoke’, oops!), mannerisms and artistic expression.

If you see me I can promise you I won’t be continually talking about the unconscious (aka subconscious): we’ll never have it cracked anyway. But it crops up in relationship (including between me and anyone I meet) whether we like it or not.

I have found it useful for me to think about it, speculate, make friends with it: it’s sometimes funny, sometimes dark, sometimes fleeting, sometimes… like tree roots hidden down in the soil.

My top priority...
I have a number of aims when I meet someone for therapy, but top of the list is that during and after our first meeting you can say to yourself, ‘I think I can talk to this man’.

Therapy and/or counselling is for anyone: people come for therapy for all sorts of reasons, and in all sorts of states. And I meet all sorts of people in my consulting room. You don’t have to be ‘ill enough’ or ‘sane enough’ or ‘distressed enough’ to make use of therapy: you just have to want to come and talk… or even not talk, if that’s what you need to do.

I have been working for over 25 years with a wide range of problems & people, privately & in the NHS. In private practice since 2001.

The initial session

The initial session lasts up to an hour and a half. We could then decide to set up a regular appointment, usually once a week for 50 minutes. That decision can be made over more than one session, if we so choose. But maybe you’re wondering what might happen in the first meeting, if you decide to come and see me… One thing is usually true: the person coming to see me is wanting to check me out, to find out if I am someone they can not only talk to about difficult things, but also whether I am someone who can help.

For example, sometimes people have wanted to be reassured that I won’t raise my eyebrows if they tell me something they feel guilty or ashamed about, or they have wanted to know that I won’t be gushing or artificially ‘nice’ – a kind of ‘tea-and-sympathy’ stereotype of the sympathetic counsellor. And sometimes people want an immediate reassurance that they can start to talk to me about something that has remained unsaid for a long time, or even forever. Either way, there is only a certain amount that you can tell from a website, so unless you have been recommended me by a friend it’s something of a shot in the dark.