Counselling & Talking Therapy

living your story

Welcome to SeeSpace Counselling & Talking Therapy – a small compassion-focussed, trauma-informed space for counselling and talking therapies. Guided by a deep belief in our individual capacity to journey towards and move through what is most challenging for us, therapist Kirstie Allan (MSc, Prof. Dip, MNCPS Accred.) seeks to travel alongside her clients, supporting them to create the space needed within themselves for increased self-compassion, awareness, healing and growth.

What is counselling & talking therapy?

By virtue of living, we are creatures of great complexity: thoughts, emotions, beliefs, relationships, experiences – many of them difficult. Surviving is what we do; it is what allows us to be standing here today. Yet often our survival patterns and strategies both serve, and cost us dearly. Whether this is in terms of the relationship we have with ourselves (internalised patterns/reactions/self-talk) or with others and the world at large (externalised patterns/reactions/modes of communicating), it can be difficult to recognise and step outside these deeply established ways of being - even when they are no longer benefitting us. This is where counselling and talking therapy come in as they allow us the space, time and relational safety and support needed to access our oft-hidden, self-made capacity for healing and growth.

As a pluralistic counselling practice, SeeSpace offers a person-centred approach to therapy based on the qualities of empathy, non-judgement and acceptance, whilst at the same time drawing on a range of therapeutic modalities including psychotherapy, attachment theory and parts work (IFS) (see more below). Pluralistic therapy is premised on finding the best working fit for its clients; on allowing each journey to unfold at its own pace within the unconditionally supportive and deeply affirming context of the therapeutic relationship. The counselling sessions can be used to reflect on and offload the complexities of everyday life or to explore a diverse range of issues which might be affecting you, including: anxiety, depression, shame, loneliness, grief, loss, childhood experiences, panic, low self-esteem, stress, relationship challenges, work/study difficulties, family challenges, bullying, self-harm, living with (neuro)diversity, suicidal thoughts, attachment patterning and trauma.

Counselling/ Therapeutic Modalities

Person-Centred: A counselling practise which places the client’s subjective experience at its heart, accepting without judgement the many presenting parts of a client’s self and story. For the therapist, it is a way of being in the world which hinges on deep empathy, congruence (transparency and self-awareness) and unconditional positive regard (non-judgement) for their clients, whoever they may be and whatever they may have experienced or be experiencing.

Psychotherapy: A psychodynamic approach to counselling works with a client’s whole story, from birth onwards. It is centred on the belief that our past experiences/relationships/traumas continue to be impactful in our present, and that some of the deep relational patterns and experiences of childhood can help us to understand the ways we think, feel and relate (to others and to ourselves) today. As a modality, it is interested in working at the edges of our awareness, encouraging what is unconscious to come into conscious awareness and in this way raising self-awareness and self-compassion, enabling healing and growth.

Attachment Theory: An important aspect of psychodynamic thinking which focuses on the human infant’s instinctive drive for love, safety and survival as pursued in their early attachment relationships with primary parents/carers. Reflecting on and understanding more about our early attachment relationships can help us understand more deeply the relational ‘blueprint’ with which we approach our relationships with self and others today.

Parts Work and Internal Family Systems (IFS): IFS is a deeply compassion-focussed way of working with the many parts of a client - their ‘internal family’ of parts - as one might an actual family. It is a deeply evolved, trauma-informed modality dedicated to understanding, honouring and ultimately unburdening those more complex parts of ourselves which can make our lives and relationships challenging. The focus for this kind of work might involve increasing dialogue, awareness and compassion between the more discordant parts of ourselves in order to lessen internal tension and outer stress. It is important to add here that I am not a fully qualified IFS therapist as this is a very specialised modality of psychotherapy from which I borrow, rather than practise comprehensively. If IFS therapy is of particular interest to you, a specialist in this field might serve your needs more fully.