Anxiety that won't settle
A mind that runs ahead to what might go wrong and won't be talked down. Lying awake. Being fine on the outside and braced on the inside, all day. You don't need to know what started it to bring it here.
counselling for adults · coming on your own
In the room in Hebden Bridge, or online
You've been thinking about this for a while.
Most people who ring us have been meaning to for months. They've opened a page like this one late at night, read it, and closed it again. They've told themselves it isn't bad enough yet, or that they ought to be able to manage.
This room is for exactly that moment, when the thinking has gone on long enough. You don't need to have it worked out. You don't need to be in a crisis. You just need to be ready to talk to someone, for twenty minutes, about whether this might help.
Arrange the free 20-minute call
what people bring
No diagnosis needed, and no referral
Some of what comes up the stairs.
None of this is a checklist, and you don't need to see yourself in any of it. It's just what we hear most often, in the words people use.
Low mood
A flatness that makes ordinary things heavy. Getting through the week without much in it. Not being sure when it began, or whether it counts as anything. It counts, and it's one of the commonest reasons people come.
Grief, and bereavement
Someone has died, last month or years ago, and the rest of the world seems to have moved on while you haven't. Grief doesn't keep to a timetable. The room doesn't ask it to, and you can talk about the person for as long as you like.
The things that are hard to name
Something's wrong and you can't say what. Nothing has happened, exactly. You don't need a label, a reason or a tidy explanation before you come. Not knowing is a perfectly good place to start, and plenty of people start there.
if you've never done this before
A session is 50 minutes
What the first fifty minutes are like.
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arriving
You come up the stairs and one of us opens the door. There's a glass of water and a chair, and nothing to fill in. If you're a few minutes early there's a seat on the landing.
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beginning
We'll ask what's brought you here. Say as much or as little as you want to. If you don't know where to start, say that. It's the most common way a first session begins, and it's a fine one.
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the hour
We listen more than we talk. You won't be asked to go anywhere you're not ready to go, and there's no right way to do this. Silence is allowed. So is changing your mind about what you wanted to say.
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at the end
A few minutes before the fifty are up, we'll say so, and ask whether you'd like to come back and when. You can take time over the answer. Nothing is booked unless you want it to be.
Online, it's the same hour in your own chair, with the link sent the day before. Either way, what you say in the session stays in it, with one exception we'll explain plainly on the call: if we believed you or someone else were at serious risk of harm. More about how private it is.
a few sessions, or longer
£65 a session · nothing fixed in advance
Some people come for a while. Some stay longer.
shorter
Counselling, for a handful of weeks
Some people come around one thing: a loss, a decision they can't make, a stretch of anxiety that has started to run the week. We work on that thing, and when it has eased or you've found your footing, we stop.
A few sessions is a perfectly good amount. Nobody here will suggest you need more than you do.
longer
Psychotherapy, over months
Some people find the thing they came with has older roots, and want to stay with it. Longer-term psychotherapy is slower and goes further back. The point is less to sort out a single problem than to understand how you came to be carrying it, and what you'd like to do differently.
It's the same chair, the same person, and the same fifty minutes each week.
We don't decide any of this in advance, and you're never signed up to anything. We talk about it together as we go, and the pace is yours.
Each session is £65, in the room or online, paid as you go. We keep a small number of reduced-fee places; if cost is the thing standing in the way, say so on the call. About reduced-fee places.
the free call
Evenings on Tuesdays and Thursdays until 20:00
Start with a free 20-minute call.
Ring or email, and Mari or Dan will talk with you about what's going on and whether this feels like the right place. It isn't an assessment and there's nothing to prepare. If it doesn't feel right, you'll have lost twenty minutes and nothing else.
If you ring while we're with someone, leave a message and one of us will call you back, usually the same day. Nothing is decided on the call unless you want it to be.