Tara Watkin

It's a big decision to start therapy, and it's so important to find a therapist that gets you. I offer a free 15 minute introductory phone call to help you decide if I am the right therapist for you. Please see my website at www.sunraycounselling.co.uk for more information. 

In-person sessions:

The Priory Street Centre, 15 Priory Street, York, YO1 6ET

Wednesday 09:30-4:30pm

Online and Telephone sessions

Monday-Friday 09:00-9pm. Sunday 7-9pm.

Please note I do not work over the Christmas and New Year period.

My Training and Experience

Hello, I'm Tara. I offer in-person sessions in York as well as online and telephone counselling across the UK. I am a fully qualified and insured therapist. I am a Registered Member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), and I'm an Accredited Registrant of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS). I have a current enhanced DBS for working with adults.

I am genuinely interested in hearing about people’s stories and lives; to me, they bring powerful moments of genuine human connection.

I trained as a person-centred counsellor, but I integrate several different psychotherapeutic approaches into my practice including gently touching on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, and Transactional Analysis. My way of working means these approaches complement the Person-Centred approach to give you a therapeutic toolbox of useful coping mechanisms and resources to support your therapy journey with me.

Alongside running my private counselling practice, I am a volunteer counsellor for York Women’s Counselling Service and also a specialist volunteer bereavement counsellor with Marie Curie. 

Areas I Work With

*emotional, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse or neglect, whether in childhood or as an adult

*bereavement, loss, and grief

*stress, anxiety, and depression

*low self-esteem and imposter syndrome

*PTSD

*guilt and shame

*complex/ongoing ill health

*family/parent carers

*affairs and betrayals

*identity and sexuality, particularly within the LGBTQ+ community

*neurodivergence

*pregnancy anxiety

*fertility struggles including miscarriage

*menopause

attachment and inner child work

difficult family dynamics and relationships

My Approach to Therapy

Therapy is all about you and your individual experiences in life. As someone who has had therapy myself, I don't believe in 'complex clients' or that you need ‘fixing’. I believe that bad and sad things happen to people, and these things are the problem, not you as a human being. You are human first, not your trauma, or your anxiety, or your depression.

All parts of you are welcome at Sunray Counselling and Psychotherapy. I offer a grounded, steady space for you to share all the emotions and feelings with me that you can’t share with others, and you will be safely held by me to explore them at your pace, in a calm, gentle, and consistent way. I’m here to meet you exactly as you are today. For clients who benefit from gentle challenge or who need a bit more direction, my integrative approach allows for this if needed.

Making the choice to start therapy can be a tough one. But it's a brave one. Together we can unpick where your feelings come from, and how you can start to move forward.

You don't have to carry it alone. I am here to help you.

If after our introductory call we feel we would be a good fit to work together, we will arrange our first therapy session. This will be 50 minutes long, and sessions will be online via a secure telemedicine video platform, or over the phone depending on your preference. Our sessions will usually be on the same day and time each week.

Our first session will involve a little bit of getting to know each other. You can tell me about your hopes for counselling, whether you have had counselling before, and the important things that you’d like to work on, and I can tell you a bit more about how I work, and what I will do to support you in your sessions.

There will also be some paperwork to complete, including a counselling contract that I will email to you before our first session, and a questionnaire that will give me an idea of your recent thoughts and feelings.