Sophie – Counsellor with TIC+, tells us how the service can help young people.

6 October 2016

Hi I’m Sophie, I am one of the counsellors here at The Link. I work with TIC+ and like the rest of the TIC+ team of counsellors, we visit schools and colleges in the county offering a counselling service. When Young Gloucestershire decided to offer a counselling service at The Link, I was keen to get involved as it is a wonderful opportunity to extend the availability of counselling to young adults.

Counselling offers a calm and confidential space to talk through any issues that are affecting your thoughts, feelings, or behaviour.  This may be due to past or present experiences, or you may not even know why you are feeling the way you do. If your feelings are controlling you and preventing you moving forward, sharing your concerns with either myself one of the other counsellors here may be helpful.

Counselling is not about stopping what thoughts or emotions come into your mind, it is a way of managing the way you relate to them. We look at ways of improving coping strategies to increase your sense of personal control. By being able to stand back and think through issues with increased awareness, you become more effective at dealing with problems.

Counselling sessions last for 50 minutes each week for seven weeks initially. There is no pressure to talk about what you don’t want – You decide.

A recent client told me that counselling “gave me the ability to understand and help myself develop into a person I can finally like and trust”. I have included this with kind permission, as I feel it says what counselling is like for some.