Clare Benjamin

I see clients face to face for in-person sessions at my therapy room in Clifton, Bristol.  

For those anywhere around the UK  I offer online sessions on zoom. 

Currently a few in person and online session slots are available - please contact me for details as this can change.

Just get in touch to find out more and check if my availability may match yours, by emailing me at : clare@counsellingwithclare.com 

Counselling with Clare 

Hi, I’m Clare a qualified counsellor offering in person sessions in Clifton, Bristol, and online sessions for anyone around the UK.

I understand how tough it can be to consider opening up to a counsellor, and will meet you with warmth, acceptance and care. 

My holistic approach means that I work in a relational and integrative way, drawing on humanistic and psychodynamic approaches - including Internal Family Systems - and tailoring these to each person I work with.  

In our work together, I will not see you as a set of symptoms or a problem to be solved, but will help you to take a good look at your life - with respect for your unique experience. 

With experience of working with people from a range of class and ethnic backgrounds, beliefs, faiths, ages and sexualities, I respect and value difference within and between us.

Your counselling sessions can offer a space to look at what you're struggling with, any obstacles that may be getting in the way of realising your hopes for yourself, and to explore making changes.

Support To Calm and Ground & Creative Ways to Access Insight

As we delve into what’s troubling you, I can draw on my background working for health charities, running creative, therapeutic ‘Writing for Wellbeing’ groups and as a Mentor supporting students with mental health and wellbeing concerns. 

This experience equips me to offer you wellbeing tools and strategies to help calm and ground, for use in sessions and in home practice.  We can also find creative ways to discover all the resources within you such as  your bodily knowing ('gut sense'), humour, and intuition.

Together we can explore what you are struggling with, uncover what inspires and energises you, and look at how you want to move forward and what you want to change.  Just go to my website: https://counsellingwithclare.com for more information.

A Safe Space To Find Yourself

My Approach To Counselling 

As a relational, integrative counsellor, I work in a person-centred and humanistic way to help build a relationship of trust, in which you can feel safe to share what you want and need to - at the pace and depth that’s right for you.

To tailor sessions to your needs, I also bring in a psychodynamic way of working and understanding of attachment - that is how our past experience of early relationships with parents or caregivers can, perhaps unconsciously, impact on and show up in  our relationships in the present. 

You may notice that parts of yourself may come up at times - such as vulnerable and playful parts, coping and critical parts, or rebellious parts that may try to offer you comfort or escape. 

As an Internal Family Systems counsellor, I can support you in getting curious and interested in all aspects of your inner experience that may be impacting your life and choices.

Working with parts of the self can help make space for aspects of you, or your experience that may have been suppressed, neglected, shamed or disowned.  This way of working can also support you in finding a more connected, whole, curious and compassionate sense of yourself.

Resourcing You

As we explore your concerns, I can resource you in developing ways to calm and ground yourself, using wellbeing tools like breath-work and visualisation.

In our work together I can also help you to pay attention to the unique, unconscious and intuitive wisdom to be found in your images, dreams, and bodily and energetic knowing.

Personalised prompts and suggestions for home practice (eg. for journalling or for breath-work) are available if wanted, and can help you to support and steady yourself between sessions, and help to consolidate our work together.

This integrative way of working helps to ensure your counselling sessions can meet your individual needs, and offer you creative and grounding ways to access all the resources within you. 

Getting Started

To find out more and share what you're seeking support with, just  get in touch with me by emailing: clare@counsellingwithclare.com to either arrange a free phone conversation for more information, or to book an introductory (intro) counselling session with me.

Your free twenty minute phone appointment will be helpful if you would like to talk before booking an intro counselling session.

Your introductory counselling session of 60 minutes with me, will be a chance for us to begin to look together at your concerns, and for you to explain what you're looking for support with.  It will give you a flavour of my approach,  to help you get a feel for how we might work together, and if I am the right counsellor for you. 

I can also answer any questions you have, and explain a bit more about counselling, my approach and what's involved in our working together.  If you have not had counselling before I can hopefully demystify the process a bit. 

After that first session, you can decide whether you want to start meeting regularly for counselling and if so, we would then set up a regular weekly session slot that would be reserved for you.