Sarah Twist

I am available flexibly Tuesday - Thursday between 9am and 5pm. I offer sessions remotely via Microsoft Teams or in person in an office in Southampton.

Sessions are 50 minutes long (one therapeutic hour)

I am a BACP registered counsellor (membership number: 412223) with over 10 years of experience working within NHS, charitable, and public sector services. Qualified to masters level in applied psychological therapy, I use an integrative approach to therapy with clients, drawing on elements of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), CAT (cognitive analytic therapy), ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy), and psychodynamic approaches, I am able to work with clients in a way that suits you and your experience of therapy.

If you have never had any counselling before, you may wish to use CBT concepts to understand how your thoughts and emotions impact on your behaviour, keeping you stuck in cycles that don't align with your goals.

If you have had a lot of support in the past, you may be ready to explore deeper aspects of your experience, using psychodynamic approaches to understand how experiences in your past have impacted on your life across the past and into the present, so that you can make changes for the future.

If you are living with a long-term illness or struggling with a situation you cannot change, you may pull on ACT concepts to find ways to identify and live in line with your values within these new constraints.

I have experience working with a number of minority groups, as well as having lived experience of a number of these. I am a non-monogamous bisexual woman, with professional and lived experience of the BDSM/Kink community. I have lived experience of neurodivergence and am flexible in my approach to counselling in order to support any needs that you may have as a neurodivergent client.

Currently all sessions of private counselling are for individuals only, and delivered remotely via video call on Microsoft Teams or in person in a Southampton Office.

Due to an interest in working with this client group, I am offering a reduction of £10 per session to tattoo artists.

Please use the contact form to talk to Sarah about starting private counselling.

Each counselling session lasts what is known as a “therapeutic hour” which is 50 minutes long. Sessions are usually done once a week at the same time on the same day. There is some flexibility with this, and upon request, we can discuss meeting more or less frequently than this.

I recommend having a minimum of 6 sessions of counselling in the first instance in order to establish a therapeutic relationship, explore topics in some depth, and make and monitor any changes you might make over the process of counselling.

There is no maximum amount of time that you can receive support, and I will work with you to manage appropriate end times for counselling support. It is important to give enough time to work through issues that you bring to counselling, but also important to have space away from counselling to reflect on how your life has been impacted.

You can return to counselling at any time for support, be it just to check in briefly or to work through new or existing difficulties.