Peter Britton

Appointments on Wednesdays and Thursdays with current availability. Face to face, on-line or telephone sessions. 

About Me

Registered and accredited member of BACP for nearly twenty years. Apart from running a private practice my experience includes secondary school counselling, working as a Psychological Therapist in NHS primary care and running a counselling service at a homeless hostel. 

How I Work

My approach is friendly and relaxed. The initial agreement is about how we will work together as a team to achieve positive change. Making sure what you want matches what I can provide is essential to avoid confusion or misunderstandings. I prefer to identify specific goals but sometimes this may not be possible and we will work in a different way. My main theoretical approach is Transactional Analysis but I draw from a number of others. I work openly and am always willing to discuss how I feel the work is progressing. There are no hidden agendas and any theory used is avoids the use of jargon or medical terminology. Regular reviews are done to make sure there we don't drift away from agreed aims. 

Short-Term Therapy

Short term-work is mostly solution focussed and involves  dealing with an acute crisis such as a loss or breakdown due work stress. The length of therapy usually ranges from 4-12 sessions though more can be added should new issues emerge. 

Long-Term Therapy

The process is more in depth and involves the following stages:

Establishing a good working alliance

Looking at what is not working in your life and deciding on how you would like to change this

Exploring the inner processes involved in what is not working 

Exploring experiences from childhood to look for negative patterns and core beliefs that may persist in adulthood

Developing  self-awareness to provide more choice in avoiding repetition of errors

Strengthening of self-care. Establishing effective personal boundaries

Measuring changes achieved

Ultimate goals are self discovery, finding meaning and purpose in life and becoming authentic and autonomous. 

My private practice for seeing face to face clients is located about a mile outside the centre of Maidstone in a newly built Community Centre. The therapy room is modern, comfortable and quiet and there is a convenient waiting area. Parking and disabled access are available and it is on a local bus route.

I see clients for both both short and long term work and offer general counselling with specialities of anger management, working with adolescents and short-term solution-focussed therapy. 

The first session involves basic practical issues of how the practice runs and agreeing on how we work together including what issues are to be dealt with and changes are to be aimed for. I prefer to work with specific goals but it may take a few sessions to clarify what these are. In some cases there are no fixed goals apart from to be listened to with compassion and without judgement.