Linette Hatfield

I have been working as a Psychodynamic Psychotherapist since 1998. During my training with the Westminster Pastoral Foundation and since I have acquired considerable experience in working with issues ranging from mild anxiety to serious psychological distress.

Alongside my training and my private practice I was employed by the mental health charity Mind in Harrow for over fifteen years as centre and group worker, supervisor and volunteer trainer. 

I was also employed as a counsellor by the Westminster Pastoral Foundation on the Serious Physical Illness project for three years.

I have been an affiliate of Counselling in Companies since 1999 and I am referred clients for EAP work. EAP is offered to employees who could benefit from a solution focused therapeutic intervention. 

As a result of the work I have done in these different settings, my practice is varied. I see people for open ended, time limited and brief intervention therapy for a wide range of emotional difficulties and dilemmas.

 The first session serves as an assessment of the most appropriate way to go forward according to the presenting problem/s and the focus of the work is determined.

A description of the therapy I offer can be summarised as a gentle exploration of blocks which prevent us from having a more fulfilling life, an understanding of the problems and a challenging of entrenched assumptions about the difficulties we experience.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy aims to make sense of what can feel like intractable situations and helps find a way through the obstacles. It serves to explain human behaviour, ours and other people’s, and it suggests ways forward. 

Understanding our past and how it informs what is happening to us in the present, is useful in moving us on to a healthier and more comfortable place.

The establishing of a therapeutic alliance is crucial to the development of the work and is predicated on a clear understanding of how it will be conducted and of what we can hope to achieve.

The first session is an assessment based on the clarifying of the presenting problems. Notes are taken in that session but not in subsequent ones.

In the first session we work together at establishing the aim of the work and the length of the contract.

A contract is  drawn up to establish our respective responsibilities with regard to the length and the frequency of the sessions, the fee, how and when it is paid. 

Due to the present restrictions of the Coronavirus I can only offer telephone or on line sessions.