How can Counselling help children with their feelings of distress, behaviours & emotions?

I support Young people from the ages of 6 to feel valued, heard and understand how they are feeling is” normal” given their personal experiences. Being young can feel:

• Lonely at times,

• Like you are failing at times because you are having to learn new things constantly and develop.

• Different / on high alert a lot of the time due changes happening within a short period of time within the body and create so many shifts in hormone levels.

• As though you don’t know who you are or where you fit in.

• Not good enough because of other peoples expectations or your own.

• Lost

• Like you don’t have any control over your life.

These are only a few of the intense feelings you may have, and they will vary depending on your experiences and the amount of support and people you feel connected to and that you can trust.

Counselling gives you a space to help you:

• Build confidence

• Find a sense of who you are,

• Understand what is important to you

• Know & create strategies on how to move through the really intense feeling you may have

• Provide knowledge on why you may be thinking or feeling the way you do

• Be heard and have a voice which will be listened to and valued because you will be the most important person in the room.

• Counselling can also help you look at different ways of managing situations, of being confident with boundaries and becoming more flexible in your approaches.

Counselling can feel scary if you think you are going to have to talk about things that make you feel uncomfortable. That is why talking is only a part of what we could do in sessions together.

One of the first things to know is If you don’t want counselling we won’t do the session because they won’t help if you don’t feel ready or want them. If this were to happen I would offer support to your parent or carer instead to help them understand distress and different strategies that might be helpful in the way they handle situations and how they manage their own feelings.

You would be in charge of the sessions and they can involve talking or they can be very creative. The focus in the early sessions will be about building a trusting relationship between you and me so you feel safe sharing anything that has been making you feel worried, different, alone or uncomfortable etc. You can again share as much or as little as you feel able to or want to and this can be through talking or through creativity / play.

Our sessions would be confidential which means that what we talk about would stay between you and me unless there was anything that made me worry about your safety or someone else’s. If I was concerned about you I would always talk to you first about it and try and find ways to make it feel as easy as possible sharing that concern with your parent / carer. I may share themes of what we talked about and use words like anxiety, grief, friendships depending on what things came up in a session should a parent request information but that would be all and my hope would be that your parent or carer could discuss the session with you and you could share as much or as little as you wanted to.

Another part of my role as a Counsellor is to help amplify your voice and help you be heard and share what you want and need with the people you feel it is important to be heard by.

I will need Parental / Carer consent for you to be able to have counselling with me and it is important that the sessions are as regular as possible to help them have the most positive impact possible. I do not offer counselling sessions in the school holiday’s.

I know how intense and difficult school life can as during the day in term time I work as a School Counsellor.

I’m here to listen & be beside you on your journey to understanding why you feel the way you do and finding strategies and ways to manage those feelings along with voicing your needs so things can start to change for the better.