Paul Carvell

I currently have availability

Servicing Weymouth, Dorchester and Portland I am a BACP registered integrative counsellor. I use the full range of my experience, training and continuing personal and professional development to pick from a suite of approaches to help in our work together. This means that one size does not fit all but that I might have your size 'out the back'.

My philosophy is grounded in a humanistic approach, supported by psychodynamic principles. I work face to face but can also offer online and bespoke outdoor therapy sessions.

You may have specific things you want to work on or may be happy to allow our time together to flow across things that naturally arise. I may from time to time introduce topics which I think may be helpful to you. Whichever way that works, we will be led by you and at the pace you want to move at and we will periodically review how we are travelling.

I work to the BACP 2018 Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions. This is a set of ethical principles that I adhere to.

I have experience working with adults and young people (college age) experiencing a wide range of life affecting issues.

Māori are the indigenous people of New Zealand who celebrate a culture with a strong sense of community, family, individual identity and a strong affinity and respect for the environment.

In Māori, hāpai is a verb meaning to take up, support, shoulder, lift, or raise physically.  (Te Aka Māori Dictionary)

Hāpai extends to emotional, social, or communal support. It can describe uplifting someone during a difficult time, fostering growth, or helping a community thrive.  

In choosing Hāpai as a name for my practice, I wanted to reflect my vision for the support I want to provide to people as well as a way to reflect my heritage. I was born and raised in New Zealand and was conscious that Māori word meaning and use is often better at conveying holistic sentiments in a single word.

I see counselling as a time where we walk the same path, where we each take the role of leader and follower in turn as we work together in therapeutic alliance. Sometimes you will be leading me in understanding how things are for you, your experience, thoughts and feelings and at other times I might be leading, guiding you towards a wider understanding of how your lived experience, thoughts and feelings may be presenting themselves in ways which may not always be helpful to you.

My client experience includes working with anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, food relationship issues, family estrangement, gender and identity exploration, grief, bereavement, attachment and childhood trauma. I have worked with clients who are experiencing difficult suicidal thoughts and a number of clients with an ASD diagnosis.

I have helped clients with issues associated with being or becoming a man in a time of changing societal thoughts about exactly what this means. This might include accessing feelings, emotional awareness and intelligence. Counselling may help you to understand exactly what your role is for the significant people in your life. It might help with understanding burnout, work/life balance, personas you adopt to operate and your how your key relationships work. We can work on pressure and anger issues.

As a migrant to this country I am also able to offer an informed therapeutic basis upon which we can explore what it is to be an immigrant to this country in these times. This might explore loss and grief, changing identity and masking of your cultural heritage. We might look at issues of support and isolation and working on developing a new sense of belonging and community.

Most often my counselling style generally presents the best outcomes with clients who are 16+years old.

If you are considering working with me I will use the information you provide to contact you for a short chat (usually around 20 minutes) which is FREE. I will contact you.

This will give us a chance to briefly explore what you would like help with and for us to sense if we can work together. We will have an intuitive feel for this after talking.

Choosing the right Counsellor for you is absolutely vital in getting good outcomes for the time you invest.

If after the initial conversation you don't think we 'fit' then I would encourage you to say so, I want you to find the right person to support you.

If we proceed, we will agree how and when we will meet. I will send you a draft contact to consider. This outlines how I work and the terms under which I offer counselling services. It covers issues like confidentiality. ethics and data protection amongst others.

I would encourage you to have a read of this in case you have any questions.

At our first session we will establish this contract by both discussing and signing it.

Acknowledging that you need some support is brave.

Having the courage to seek help is hard.

It can be daunting choosing a person to confide in.

Our first session can be daunting and you may just want to 'mind dump'! You have been carrying things for a long time, I understand this and we will work at your pace. We will tease out themes and agree on issues you want to specifically work on in future sessions.

My role is to support and guide you, you will not be alone in this journey.