Valerie -39:I have been a client of Barbara’s for two years. Barbara restored my faith in counselling and it’s power to really change your life and heal you from within. I had lost a lot of confidence and hope in counselling as I had found previous counsellors didn’t seem to offer me constructive ways and methods of how to put my therapy in to practice and how to use practical methods to improve the way I handled my emotions and life situation. They seemed to just be a listening ear. Barbara has a wonderful intrinsic approach that is personalised to the individual. I have learned a lot about myself, my limiting beliefs, my triggers, my childhood trauma, my self-sabotaging behaviour and my learned behaviours. I felt completely powerless and now I feel empowered and have become aware of myself. I realise now I have choices and feel no more shame about the past. I have been able to heal using these methods and techniques. I feel totally comfortable and able to tell Barbara anything. The space she gives her clients is a totally safe, non-judgemental and valid one. I have become a much more resilient person thanks to Barbara and have the understanding to recognise when certain behaviours or emotions creep back in and I now have the ability to address them, question them and access them. I know if things are serving me now or not and if they are true or not and where these feelings stem from. As a result, I have much more control over the outcomes for my life and recover much more effectively from life’s trials than I ever did before.

I highly recommend Barbara. Thank you for helping me to see my inner warrior!

Megan – 59: “You were the best thing to happen to me and I’ll be back as soon as I need to”. I went to see Barbara, desperately needing counselling.  A number of big events had occurred around that time and I felt that my world had collapsed around me.  Barbara was the best person I could have seen.  She never forced me to say anything, but she made me feel comfortable and was able to get me to open up.  I’d gladly go back to her for future sessions,,.

Billy and Becki – 30s – Working with Barbara has provided an invaluable ‘safe space’ to have difficult conversations and, ultimately, to improve our relationship. Having a skilled and impartial third party present really has helped us to explore our most significant challenges as a couple, without risking the conversation getting derailed and making things worse. Barbara is great at facilitating an open, honest and productive dialogue.

Kimberley – 30:  The 1st lockdown meant I was completely unable to work & like everyone, all social activities stopped. So why when we came out of it, when work began to pick up, when I could see my friends & family did I begin to struggle? I’ve never struggled before well not to this dark level. I felt completely lost in the world & found myself regularly crying myself to sleep at night & not really understanding why, other than the thought that so many parts of my life seemed to be going wrong. I knew I need to do something, we are so lucky we have so many amazing charities with helplines but thought of chatting with a random person at a call centre filled me with more dread. That’s when I reached out to Barb. I felt like I was talking to a real person. I know this gets said a lot but Barb really is an amazing listener. I find when I talk to people about problems, we all tend to listen to the 1st thing that gets said & then hang on to that. Barb quietly listened to it all & I quickly realised I didn’t need to say every aspect of my life at 100 miles an hour, she was going to listen to everything. She quietly & slowly directed my chatting through all the horrible thoughts in my head. We slowly realised that even though lockdown had eased the feelings I had where from my loss of independence & loss of purpose through those difficult months of lockdown, she compared it to someone being made redundant. Understanding why I’d ended up there helped me pick my way through my thoughts & slowly begin to repair everything. It definitely didn’t happen over night but I can’t begin to imagine how hard things would of got if I hadn’t had that time with Barb.

Vera – 68: I went to see Barbara for several weeks. When I started, I was feeling very low and teary. After my first session on my way home, I knew I wanted to go back again, as the buried things in my life started to reappear only due to Barbara. She has a wonderful way of making you feel you can go forward and be positive. She certainly made a big difference for me and the confidence I had lost started to come back.