Alison Rimell

I offer sessions Mondays-Fridays inclusive

Some early morning and evening sessions are available.

Welcome!

I am an experienced BACP Accredited Counsellor / Therapist currently working with Couples and Individuals face-to -face in my counselling room in Diss, South Norfolk. I also offer online or phone sessions to individual clients UK wide including locally in Norwich, Attleborough, Thetford, Stowmarket, Bury St. Edmunds and Ipswich.

I offer long-term and short-term counselling and therapy to Couples and Individual Adults aged 18 and above.

I offer individual clients a free initial 20 minute consultation via Zoom or phone on a no obligation basis.

I have experience of working with a wide range of therapy issues such as depression, bereavement, stress, anxiety, relationship difficulties, panic attacks, trauma, abuse, anger and many more.

I am passionate about my counselling work and offer you a confidential, safe, empathic therapeutic relationship where you can develop trust to work with what is causing you difficulty in living.

As an Accredited member of the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) I adhere to it’s ethical code and supervision requirements as well as being subject to its complaints procedure. 

BackGround

I was born and brought up in England and at 18 studied performance at a London Music College and then went on to get a Post Graduate Certificate in Education. At the age of 28, I moved to the Isle of Mull in Scotland where I lived for 25 years. There, I became immersed in the community, taught music in schools, brought up my daughter, ran my own B&B and Self Catering business and latterly became business manager of a social enterprise. In 2012 I moved off the island, completed my Post Graduate Counselling Diploma at Strathclyde University, Glasgow and have gained much experience working solely as a counsellor in various settings and private practice ever since. I moved back to England in 2020 and am delighted to be able to continue offering counselling in Diss and UK wide.

My approach is Person Centred which means that I will listen very carefully to you and respect and value your experience without judgement as a basis for all our work. I will be responsive to the way that you need to work and can provide a flexible integrated approach to suit you. Generally through talking about your experiences in the world, we will pay attention to how emotions occur in you, your thoughts and how they connect with how you feel in your body. Each person is individual but as we work together in this way there are general outcomes that most clients experience such as:

Becoming more self-aware of how things happen inside you.

Forming a clearer picture how present and past social expectations, systems and conditions emerge for you and becoming more aware of the choices you may have around how you relate to them.

Being able to trust your internal experience of yourself and feel more confident to use that as a guide in relationships and the outer world.

Getting to know yourself in new ways and have a new understanding of things that have been difficult for you.

Feeling both more positive and less overwhelmed by negatives.

Being able to make decisions that support you to feel more self empowered.

Experiencing being accepted unconditionally.

First sessions are the first step in getting to know each other. We will go at the pace that works for you and there are no specific rules for this. Everyone is different and what you want to work with in the sessions will emerge through our conversations. Starting can be a bit like stepping into the unknown but I will support you all the way and you will soon find yourself feeling more at ease.

In the first session specifically, I will outline the contract and guidelines that I work within so that you can be clear on how things work.

For online sessions with Individual clients, we will have found a mutual time for the hour session and I will have sent you a Zoom link in an email. You will click on your Zoom link at the beginning of the session.

For face-face sessions for Individual and Couples clients, you will come to my counselling room in Diss at the time you are booked in for.

I will be supporting Individual clients to explore why you are coming to counselling and perhaps what you are hoping to gain from the sessions. I will be interested to know anything you would like to say about how you want the sessions to go and perhaps the number of sessions you have in mind. 

In Couples/Relationship Counselling. I will aim to hold the balance between you, to act as a mirror reflecting back what I observe, to raise awareness of the impact of your responses and behaviour on each other, to become aware of  patterns and to find ways to communicate and manage conflict that supports you positively as a couple.

This will help me to work in the way that suits you best. Sometimes its hard to know quite what is the problem right at the start, how you want to work or how many sessions you want and that is fine as well. 

We take the first step and go from there.