Christina Kelekun

My name is Christina. As your counsellor I will provide you with a confidential, non-judgmental space in which you can feel safe to tell your story, express your real feelings and fears and feel heard. I will support you to explore thoughts and feelings that you are finding painful and distressing and try to help you towards a resolution.

My approach is described as integrative. This means that I work using skills from different counselling approaches (psychodynamic, humanistic, CBT, self-compassion, body focussed or creative methods) to best help you with whatever difficulties you bring to counselling. I believe that everyone is different and uses counselling in their own unique way depending on personality, history and the issues you want to address and, therefore, I am flexible and adjust to your needs.

I work with individual adult clients, both long-and short term. I can offer you face to face or online sessions. 

How I work:

In order for you to feel comfortable to bring any issue that is troubling you, it is important that we we build a relationship based on trust and openness. I will offer you a supportive and reflective space and listen to you in an open-minded and non-judgmental way. I will be transparent in the way I work with you and share my thoughts and reflections with you and will take an active part in the sessions rather than just listen.

I know from my own experience that life can be difficult at times, maybe because of your experiences as a child and/or what life throws at us as adults. And often you may find that there is a link between the two, themes that repeat in your life and that continue to cause us pain, anxiety and unhappiness. 

Or you might have suffered the loss of a loved one that is hard to cope with, separation/divorce, loss of income, bullying in the workplace confusion over your identity (sexual, nationality, cultural), loss of home country regardless of whether this was through choice or fleeing persecution etc.

Whatever the difficulty, I will help you in processing difficult feelings, experiences and in finding a resolution.

My experience:

I have worked as a Counsellor for over 20 years. My experience of working with adults covers charities, Place2Be, Occupational Health and private practice.

Furthermore, I have many years' experience of offering counselling/play therapy to children in primary and secondary schools.

I have extensive experience of working with adults, children and families in family support roles in charities and statutory services.

My training:

Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling - 2005

Certificate in Humanistic and Psychodynamic Counselling - 2003

Certificate in Counselling Children - 2015

Diploma in Creative Approaches to Supervision - 2021

I regularly take part in courses for my continued professional development

I am an accredited member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and adhere to their code of ethics

The first session is a chance for us to meet and see if we want to work together, if we can connect on a human level.  Our therapeutic relationship will be at the heart of our work together. 

You will be able to talk about the reason for seeking therapy and maybe what you might want to gain from therapy if you know.  If you don't know, that's also OK.  If there is time, I will also need to gather some background information about your current life and basic outline of your childhood to help me understand you better.

I will also need to gather some information about you (address, next of kin) and talk about the way that we want to work together, including appointment times and frequency, possible length of therapy, cancellations, costs etc.