Reconnect With What Matters To You
Empowering and compassionate counselling for adults in North Yorkshire, and across the UK.
Do you sometimes struggle to find your own voice in amongst the expectations that are placed on you by others in your life?
Do you feel pressure to live your life a certain way?
Do you find it hard to take your own needs into consideration?
I'm Sara, a person-centred counsellor and registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). I'm based near Northallerton in North Yorkshire and offer online and telephone counselling to adults in the local area, and across the UK. Sessions cost £50, last 50 minutes, and usually take place on the same day and at the same time each week.
I can support you with a range of issues including anxiety, grief, low mood, relationship and parenting issues, and low self-esteem. I have a particular interest in exploring how our experiences, relationships and the expectations placed on us can affect the way we see ourselves. This might involve feelings of guilt, shame, self-doubt or a sense that life hasn't turned out quite as we imagined. This area of counselling is one I am particularly passionate about having spent parts of my own life feeling concerned by how others view me, and finding that my mental health and sense of wellbeing suffered as a result. Over time, I have learned to trust my own voice more, and I want to help you to do the same.
How We'll Work Together:
In our sessions, we’ll focus on:
Identifying where any of the “shoulds” and “musts” you carry in relation to your life have come from. For example “to be a good daughter, I should…”, “to be a good friend I must…” Do they feel like they are thoughts that have come from within yourself, or from someone else in your life, or society as whole?
Starting to challenge these “shoulds” and “musts” and taking the power away from them.
Exploring what truly matters to you, what your values are and what you would like your life to look like.
Empowering you so that you can live a life that feels more aligned with what you really think, feel and want, rather than what others expect from you.
I will offer you empathy and compassion, and will provide a space where you feel supported and accepted. I will approach what you bring to sessions with curiosity, with the aim of really understanding you and what it is like to walk in your shoes. Where I think it may be of benefit to you, I will provide gentle challenge or offer a different way of looking at things but I will never tell you what to do or offer you advice. This is because I would like you to leave our sessions feeling empowered to trust yourself, and I believe that the best person to make choices and decisions about your life is you.
An invitation to start your journey with a conversation…
Choosing a counsellor is personal. It’s important that you feel comfortable with the person you are talking to and that the relationship feels right for you.
That’s why I offer a free 15-20 minute introductory call. It’s a chance for us to talk briefly about what you’re looking for, and for you to ask any questions and get a sense of whether working together feels right.
There is no obligation to book a session afterwards.
Read the latest from the Open Nest Blog here…
Who gets to decide what your life “should” look like?
A blog about the difficulty of living a life that is true to yourself when other people and society has certain expectations for us. Read it here…
Why do I care so much about what other people think?
A blog about how to separate your voice from the opinions, views and judgements of others, so that you can live a life which feels more true to you. Read it here…
How do I reconnect with what matters to me?
In this blog, I talk about getting in touch with your values and the benefits that this can have for your wellbeing. You can read more here.
When life doesn’t look the way you thought it would…
It can be hard when life doesn’t look the way we imagined it would, and it’s ok to feel happy with some aspects of life but also feel a sense of loss for things that happened differently from how we expected them to. Read it here…
Why is it so hard to say no?
A blog about why some of us find it hard to say no, what the impact of saying yes to things we don’t want to do is on our sense of self, and how we can live a life that is more true to ourselves. Read more here…
“I don’t know what’s wrong, I just don’t feel like myself”
Sometimes people feel like they need to have a clear problem, or be experiencing a crisis, to have counselling. That isn’t the case though, and if you don’t feel like yourself and would like a space to explore what’s happening for you, counselling can provide that. You can read more here.