Natasha Williamson

** I'm at full capacity and unlikely to be able to take new enquiries until Mon 04/09/23 **

Mon - am/pm - after school/evening availability for Children/Young people

Tues - pm - after school/evening availability for Children/Young people

Wed - am/pm

Thurs - am/pm - after school/evening availability for Children/Young people

Please enquire for early morning (pre 8am) and evening availability and I'll do my best to accommodate you.

Hello! Thank you for viewing my profile. I'd like to share some more about me to help you decide if you would like to get in touch.

Much of my counselling career has been working with a diverse group of people, with over 8 years in a children's hospice directly with children accessing the hospice and their family members. I work with adults, children and young people (age 4 up).

Working with children & young people

Counselling younger clients often involves creative resources and therapeutic play to:

• build positive self-worth/self-esteem/self-identity
• support them to cope with loss & grief
• prepare for medical procedures/hospital admissions
• build resilience
• manage bullying (in/out of cyberspace)
• promote healthy ways to cope with tricky relationships & feelings (home, school, family & friends)

Working with adults

I have a lot of experience of working across a diverse range of difficulties:

• anxiety, panic, depression, self-injury, suicidal ideation
• low self-esteem, loss of identity or purpose
• survivors of abuse, violence or assault
• grief, loss, bereavement (relationships, employment, death)
• intrusive thoughts, sleeplessness, nightmares & flashbacks

Coping with traumatic life events

I use two interventions to help people cope with the fallout of trauma.

The Flash Technique (used in EMDR) & Rewind are designed to help you move the recollection of such events to long-term memory, reducing their intrusion on everyday life.

They can help in different situations:

• witnessing/being directly involved in a terrible accident
• being involved in combat
• surviving criminal assault
• traumatic hospital procedure
• any experience leaving a heavy footprint of nightmares/flashbacks/intrusions

Having a 'no obligation' chat

If you are interested in pursuing counselling with me, it is often helpful for us to talk informally on the phone or via a web meeting (I use Zoom) so I can get a better idea of what you are looking for and we can talk about the ways I may be able to help you. Every person I work with is unique, as is their life experience so far, so this initial discussion is a good place to start, it also gives you the opportunity to connect with me outside of my website and get a sense if you'd like to continue.

After this discussion, if you wish to carry on, we will organise an initial session. Counselling sessions generally last for 60 minutes although if we are incorporating a specific intervention (such as Rewind or Flash for managing the fall-out from traumatic events), we may agree to book a slightly longer session at 90 minutes.

Do we meet in-person or online?

I can offer both. If we meet in-person, these sessions are held in my private counselling room or we can do a walk & talk therapy outdoors. On-line sessions are held via Zoom for web or audio meetings; I can also offer Instant Message counselling or email therapy.

Preparing for the first session

Before our first session, I will send you an informational pack which will include the counselling agreement (contract) that we will make together, some FAQ's, confirmation of session fees and ways to pay and directions to my counselling premises (if we are meeting in-person).

During our first session, we will look at the counselling agreement (contract) together and ensure you are comfortable with the contents, thereafter we will both sign the document.

Coming to counselling can feel difficult and sometimes people say they don’t feel good for a short time after a session; but therapy can be helpful when feeling painful emotions, facing difficult decisions, in order to improve or change relationships, or to help in developing a better understanding of yourself and/or others.

At its core, the aim of counselling is to help you improve your mental and emotional health - much like when people exercise or go to the gym to take care of physical health.

Counselling can help you to flex those mental muscles, giving them the attention they need, helping you to be Mind-fit as well as Body-fit.

Mon-Thurs 8am-5pm.

Please enquire about early (pre 8am) or evening availability; I will do my best to accommodate you.

NB.  The supervision fee quoted is for 90 minutes, not one hour

Supervision is the space for practitioners to reflect on their client work and have a safe and confidential place to review both theirs and their clients' growth, challenges and development.

As such, my role as a supervisor is not to enter the process to specifically influence a behaviour or the ability of the practitioner, but to assure quality service provision, ensure ethical practise, offer some learning and apply checks to ensure the counsellor is undertaking continual professional development.

I have worked with psychotherapy professionals at the very beginning stages of their practise whilst on placement and others who have been working in this field for many years and have huge amounts of expertise.  I have also supervised healthcare professionals in other roles working in clinical settings.  I have worked both in organisations and in private practise.  My client based has been wide and diverse, ranging from very young children to adults in their 80's.  

The models I mostly work from are rooted in both the Integrated Developmental Model (Stoltenberg, McNeil & Delworth) and the Discrimination Model (Bernard).

I have found that both of these theoretical models really lend themselves to creating a very supportive, collaborative environment from within which to deliver and receive supervision, which I believe will help colleagues to feel more comfortable in the supervision space. My approach is flexible in order to be valuable and worthwhile for each supervisee.​

Ultimately, as with therapy, having a strong and trusting rapport between supervisor/supervisee is essential to allow you the space to breathe, to re-calibrate, to reflect and simply just to be. I bring all of my therapeutic skills to bear alongside my clinical supervision expertise; in order to offer a beneficial, ethical and supportive experience.

"The more room you give yourself to express your true thoughts and feelings, the more room there is for your wisdom to emerge" ~ Marianne Williamson

Having a 'no obligation' chat

If you are interested in pursuing supervision with me, it can be helpful for us to talk informally on the phone or via a web meeting (I use Zoom) so we each have a chance to find out a bit more about one another.  

As with counselling clients, every practitioner coming to supervision is unique, as is their professional and personal life experience, so this initial discussion is a good place to start.  It also gives you the opportunity to connect with me outside of this profile and my website for you to get a sense if you'd like to continue.

After this discussion, if you wish to carry on, we will organise an initial session.  We can arrange a 90 minute session once a month, but I am flexible on this, for example if you'd prefer shorter, fortnightly sessions of an hour - sometimes for trainees or newly qualified counsellors, this can feel more supportive than meeting once every 4 weeks.  

Preparing for the first session

Before our first session, I will send you an informational pack which will include the supervision agreement (contract) that we will make together, some FAQ's, confirmation of session fees and ways to pay and directions to my counselling premises (if we are meeting in-person).

During our first session, we will look at the supervision agreement (contract) together and ensure you are comfortable with the contents, thereafter we will both sign the document.