Brendan Barnes

I am available for online work Tuesday- Thursday during the day and Tuesday and Wednesday early evening 

I see counselling as a collaboration between the two of us. In the recent past, I have worked with anxiety, stress, depression, anger, and feelings of loss of meaning and direction. My role is to support you in the issues that brought you to counselling.

We each have our own story. I do not claim to have “all the answers”, but I aim to help people find their own answers. To do this, I attend to my client’s way of being, including their family, social and cultural context. Put another way, the way we see ourselves, others and the world around us is the result of choices we have made, but we also make assumptions and take on board the assumptions of others.

Through dialogue, we have the possibility to explore your values, beliefs, choices, and assumptions and how you experience yourself and how you relate to others. Considering alternative perspectives and exploring our behaviours and experiences with another person allows us to reconnect with who we really are and create the conditions for growth.

Committing to counselling is a big step for anyone. It’s important that you define the direction and pace of the work. Our work is led by your needs. The conditions need to be right and that can take time. For any counselling to help, it must be possible for people to share things that are deeply sensitive to them. If you are not comfortable to share, then there can be no progress. I am committed to providing a safe, supportive, and non-judgmental environment for these conversations. I believe that counselling works best when there is sufficient trust between the counsellor and the client to allow the therapist to question, explore and challenge the client’s thinking. That can be uncomfortable (sometimes for both of us) but it is by questioning what we think we know about ourselves that insight emerges about our internal processes and narratives. 

Psychotherapeutic Counselling is a talking therapy, intended to help people bring about change and enhance wellbeing. It involves regular (usually weekly) sessions of 50 minutes and can be used to help people with a range of emotional and psychological problems of varying degrees of severity. The duration of therapy may be left open-ended or there may be a defined time limit. Both duration and goals are agreed at the outset as part of the contracting process between therapist and client.

I offer counselling online. My approach is based on my integrative training, which means that I draw on resources from different schools of psychotherapy. This can be helpful given the different backgrounds and preferred ways of working that clients bring to counselling. I seek to be genuine, supportive and authentic in my relationships with clients. Within the range of psychotherapies that exist, my approach is based on the humanistic tradition, with a strong influence from existential and attachment theory.

• Humanistic approaches to counselling emphasise the quality of the relationship between counsellor and client and are underpinned by a belief in the human desire to grow and self-heal.

• Existentialism focuses on the meaning that we attach to our lives and our responsibility to make the right choices in order to live meaningful lives in the face of anxiety and uncertainty.

• Attachment theory sees our way of being in the world (sometimes called an internal working model”) as having its roots in experiences in early life.

In terms of background, I studied Psychology at University (1977-80). Following graduation, I worked in the private sector initially in London and, for the last 20 years, in Brussels. In 2016, I commenced training as an Integrative Counsellor . My own experience with counselling led me to a conviction about its contribution to enabling us to understand and accept ourselves as we are.

In our first session we will discuss what is going on for you and how counselling/therapy might help. I do not charge for this session, as I believe that it is important that we both have a chance to see if we could work together successfully. 

I have availabilities on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon/early evening and Thursday morning for face to face work work (in the Farringdon/Barbican area of Central London)

I see counselling as a collaboration between the two of us. In the recent past, I have worked with anxiety, stress, depression, anger, and feelings of loss of meaning and direction. My role is to support you in the issues that brought you to counselling.

We each have our own story. I do not claim to have “all the answers”, but I aim to help people find their own answers. To do this, I attend to my client’s way of being, including their family, social and cultural context. Put another way, the way we see ourselves, others and the world around us is the result of choices we have made, but we also make assumptions and take on board the assumptions of others.

Through dialogue, we have the possibility to explore your values, beliefs, choices, and assumptions and how you experience yourself and how you relate to others. Considering alternative perspectives and exploring our behaviours and experiences with another person allows us to reconnect with who we really are and create the conditions for growth.

Committing to counselling is a big step for anyone. It’s important that you define the direction and pace of the work. Our work is led by your needs. The conditions need to be right and that can take time. For any counselling to help, it must be possible for people to share things that are deeply sensitive to them. If you are not comfortable to share, then there can be no progress. I am committed to providing a safe, supportive, and non-judgmental environment for these conversations. I believe that counselling works best when there is sufficient trust between the counsellor and the client to allow the therapist to question, explore and challenge the client’s thinking. That can be uncomfortable (sometimes for both of us) but it is by questioning what we think we know about ourselves that insight emerges about our internal processes and narratives. 

Psychotherapeutic Counselling is a talking therapy, intended to help people bring about change and enhance wellbeing. It involves regular (usually weekly) sessions of 50 minutes and can be used to help people with a range of emotional and psychological problems of varying degrees of severity. The duration of therapy may be left open-ended or there may be a defined time limit. Both duration and goals are agreed at the outset as part of the contracting process between therapist and client.

I offer counselling online. My approach is based on my integrative training, which means that I draw on resources from different schools of psychotherapy. This can be helpful given the different backgrounds and preferred ways of working that clients bring to counselling. I seek to be genuine, supportive and authentic in my relationships with clients. Within the range of psychotherapies that exist, my approach is based on the humanistic tradition, with a strong influence from existential and attachment theory.

• Humanistic approaches to counselling emphasise the quality of the relationship between counsellor and client and are underpinned by a belief in the human desire to grow and self-heal.

• Existentialism focuses on the meaning that we attach to our lives and our responsibility to make the right choices in order to live meaningful lives in the face of anxiety and uncertainty.

• Attachment theory sees our way of being in the world (sometimes called an internal working model”) as having its roots in experiences in early life.

In terms of background, I studied Psychology at University (1977-80). Following graduation, I worked in the private sector initially in London and, for the last 20 years, in Brussels. In 2016, I commenced training as an Integrative Counsellor . My own experience with counselling led me to a conviction about its contribution to enabling us to understand and accept ourselves as we are.

In our first session we will discuss what is going on for you and how counselling/therapy might help. I do not charge for this session, as I believe that it is important that we both have a chance to see if we could work together successfully.