Kristine Sampson

I mainly work online and have flexible availability for remote and telephone sessions, including evenings and Saturday mornings. I also have some availability for face-to-face appointments on Thursdays in Uxbridge. Please do contact me regarding current availability. 

I qualified as a counsellor in 2003, and now find that I have a wealth of experiential insight and learning to draw on in my  practice. As important, I believe, is the endless interest I have about the inner world of my clients, my intuition, compassion and unflinching focus on each client's potential for growth, and  alignment with their true value.

Before I became a counsellor, I worked with people with learning disabilities in residential care and supported living. Inspired by the courage and determination of the people I worked with, I loved the opportunity to offer encouragement and support, to increase confidence and to facilitate each person to make choices and live more of the life that they wanted. That simple principle and value continues to motivate my therapeutic work with all human beings on a moment to moment basis.

My focus is always on creating a space in which the work of therapy is possible, a space that is safe, respectful, honest, clear of judgement,  

The initial stage of therapy always involves building enough trust to allow the therapeutic work to unfold. Carl Rogers conducted therapy as if he was asking an implicit question ‘Is this how it is with you?’, Am I getting this right? I am continually influenced by this, and through accurate empathic reflection, I am always trying to get a sense of how you are feeling and what you are experiencing. The words, the gesture, the emphasis are all important. We are working at building trust, confidence, a robust therapeutic space. 

How therapy progresses will of course depend on you and your focus, what you want to look at and what you want to change. But independent of your presenting issue, I believe therapy is facilitative in creating a new relationship with yourself, helping to unblock the fears, resistances and insecurities that are preventing you from moving forward with confidence and clarity.

The diversity of the people I have worked with over the last 20 years has been especially rich, and my clients have included people of many different ethnicities, cultural backgrounds and belief systems, people who express their sexuality and gender identity in different ways.  I have worked with adults of all ages from 18 to 81 years old. The range and depth of this diversity of experience is hard to put into words. Yet with each client it is a new beginning, original and full of potential.  I wonder what new experiences each client will bring and I look forward to hearing.

I believe that with enough focus you will almost certainly benefit from short-term counselling, but therapy is not always a 'quick fix' and lasting change may involve a longer term commitment.  

If you would like to arrange a short telephone call before committing to a payed session, I would be happy to arrange this for you - and you can get a sense of whether we would work well together before taking the next step.  

Initial contact is probably the hardest part and it is understandable for you to be anxious.  It is well known that the therapist feels some anxiety too, and well she ought, because this is an important conversation! (Bion,1961) - I always ask my new clients to tell me as much or as little as they feel comfortable with at this point of contact.  There will always be time for more later.