Lucy Dorey

I'm a BACP-accredited counsellor with extensive experience working with adults experiencing a range of psychological difficulties. Alongside counselling, I'm involved in training and supervision for professionals and related research.

I aim to create a space that is safe and non-judgmental, where we can explore both the difficulties you're experiencing as well as the aspects of your life that matter most to you and how to live fully in line with what you value

I will give you space to speak about the difficulties you are facing, and the impact these issues are having on you. We will understand together how the difficulties have come about, and also what keeps the same difficulties re-occurring. Understanding yourself better can be a relief, but you might also need to break patterns of behaviour and thinking that are no longer serving you.

Part of my approach is to introduce skills that help you to act in line with whats important to you rather than old patterns, such as :

1. Be more present to events in the moment rather than caught up in thinking troublesome thoughts

2. Notice when your thinking is unhelpful and learn to stand back and be less impacted by unhelpful thoughts

3. Notice emotions coming and going and gradually improve your ability to open to these and allow them to be experienced.

These skills can help you to learn how to follow through on actions in line with your chosen life direction, even when you are experiencing difficulties.

My professional training includes Humanistic Counselling, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Psychosynthesis Counselling and Mindfulness Teacher Training.

When you contact me through this directory I will reply as promptly as possible within week days, usually within 24 hours

I will invite you to speak on the phone or zoom to discuss whether therapy with me is likely to meet your needs from counselling. Or if you prefer we can arrange a first session without speaking first.

Following this if we are both happy to proceed we will agree a contract making clear how the therapy works in terms of frequency, times, venue, confidentiality, privacy, and cancellations. 

Therapy can be either in person, online or a hybrid approach with online and in-person sessions. With online therapy you have convenience, but can miss out on some of the benefits of being in person. For example being in-person can help us build a more grounded relationship, which can feel more containing such as when deep emotions are being shared.

In our first session I will ask you about the issues that have brought you to seek counselling. I will also ask you about any positive things and people you have in your life and about the aspirations you have for your life. What really matters to you? If you have a spiritual life this can be included in our exploration. 

Together we will begin to understand the issues that you want help with, and I will suggest how we might work together on those issues. We will then agree a contract as described above. 

I offer supervision to counsellors and other therapists who have attended ACT training courses, and now want to apply this approach in their therapy work. I am a Peer Reviewed ACT trainer with the Association of Contextual Behavioural Science for which I needed to demonstrate competence as a practitioner and trainer. I have adopted a developmental model to my supervision which takes into account the level of competence in ACT as to how directive my approach is. I also draw on the 7 eyed model of supervision.

Having trained as a humansitic counsellor I aim to create a context in which you feel valued and safe to open up and discuss the professional and personal challenges of your therapy work.

 I offer both online and in-person Southampton based sessions.

I am happy to provide an online no fee introductory chat prior to your decision about moving forward with the supervision

In the first session I will ask you about your professional background and your work setting. We will discuss the contract I will have sent you and adapt it to your needs where necessary.