William Townsend

My availability is listed on my website's 'Contact' page.

Hello, I’m Will.

I work humanistically. Essentially this means I believe you are the expert on you, and my job is to understand you and how you experience your life.

I believe in working with the whole of you, for example, your thoughts, emotions, your body, your diet, and more, to get a sense of what in your life connects to what you have come to counselling for.

I am open minded about how therapy can work. This means I can bring alternative perspectives in, and offer ideas for how we work together. This could involve talking, noticing how we build our relationship, working with body language and movement, or the connections between your mind, emotions and body.

Importantly we will work towards you feeling capable to deal with those issues without me, in your own way. Your autonomy is very important in my practice, and everything I offer is an invitation.

I became a counsellor because I’m passionate and curious about people, and supporting them to understand themselves as they are.

It was hard to see then, but growing up I didn’t have the tools I needed to understand myself, my emotions, or how to handle many of the issues I encountered in life. I often found myself stuck in patterns, and struggling to understand how I felt or who I was.

Therapy supported me to break historic cycles and patterns in my life. I now live the life I want to lead, rather than the life I felt was given to me.

Below I have listed my accreditations if you wish to know, but alongside my counselling training and practice I have a long history of working with bodies and movement in the arts, which has an impact on how I work. I have also been working within the events world in manual labour and skilled trades like electrics and lighting since I was a teenager, and this has led me to understand how class and our professions can ‘identify’ us, which in my experience can be a barrier to people feeling able to engage in therapy.

To begin we would meet for an initial session of 50 minutes, and decide there if we wish to work together, and how.

Whether you’ve had therapy before or if this is your first time, an initial session enables us to get to know one another and assess if we are the right fit. This session includes me asking a range of questions about your life, your past, and your habits. This isn’t a standard therapy session, more of an introduction.

To work with you effectively, I need to understand where you are coming from, why you are seeking therapy, and whether we fit. Equally as important, this is a chance for you to get a sense of me, and if you feel I am right for you.

I may ask you to fill out some forms prior to, or during this session. These will be explained fully when sent.

Initial sessions cost £42.