Erica Ruse-Whalley

I work with children, (lower fee than above) adults and parents on all emotional and relationship difficulties, both onlineon the phone and face to face, I use a number of ways of working, many of them creative , to enable you to find the best ways of working to suit you. I have special experience of working with anxiety, stress, depression, loss, ( including pet bereavement) relationship difficulties with partners and families, divorce and blended families. Also for life events and life changes such ends of relationships, and divorce post natal depression , redundancy, and retirement 

I am a Barnado's approved adoption Counsellor, offering counselling to adopted children and adults, adoptive parents and natural parents. This training also gives me particular experience in working with "looked after children " and foster parents

I offer the choice of using many additional creative techniques such as a specialist Jungian-Kalffian sandplay work for all ages, this is a soothing, absorbing and highly effective way of working in all difficulties, especially on anxiety and attachment, as it works at an unconscious level. I always use a number of techniques using metaphor such as “Clean Language”  as recent research finds these methods more effective than direct talking. I also use “guided drawing",  and further techniques such as the Emotional Freedom technique (tapping) and "picture tapping", which are powerful but "lighter" ways to work in addition to talking.

I am a Counsellor in schools and have wide experience in working with children and young people from 5 yrs onwards with anxiety, depression, bereavement and loss, bullying, self-esteem, school refusal and phobias, separation anxiety, anger and friendship issues.

I can also offer advice to parents on handling emotions and behaviour of children and young people, and in the family using my training in "Webster Stratton" Trouble-shooting for parents.

In your first session, my main aim is to offer you  a warm welcome and a gentle opportunity to get to know each other, so that you can feel as comfortable as possible and hopefully for you to feel reassured that we would work well together. The first session can be seen as a stand alone session, so if you don’t feel happy to continue for any reason, you can leave it there. 

    We would talk about what is concerning you at the moment, together with some general details about your life at the moment, and we can discuss which ways of working might be helpful to you. We would then arrange a regular time for us to work together