Safe Space Therapy Counselling & Psychotherapy in Norwich
with counsellor & psychotherapist Caroline Kendal

A Safe Space to:

• Be understood, heard and comforted.
• Explore aspects of yourself.
• Gain insight and understanding.
• Bring about the change you want.
  
  Imagine having someone in your life with whom you can feel accepted, heard and understood - no matter what you say. Someone with whom you can share the losses, disappointments, anger and pleasure you experience in life. Having someone you can rely upon. Same time, same place.
  
  It takes courage to enter therapy, look at yourself and take control of your life. But in a society where focus is on changing the outside, real change can only take place when we have changed inside.
  
  Sometimes we need help to make that change.
  
  Based in Norwich, I have a great deal of counselling and psychotherapy experience in working with:
• Anger, anxiety, depression, loneliness and loss.
• Family dynamics.
• Relationship issues and break-ups.
• Sexuality.
• Eating disorders.
• Trauma and abuse.
• I also work with the “everything is alright but something feels wrong” syndrome.
  
  Please contact me for counselling in Norwich, Norfolk to discuss your situation further and how I might help.
  
  Why come to therapy?
  
  People often come to therapy when going through a crisis, feel stuck, uncertain or simply have the need to change and want to do something about it.
  
  Talking to your therapist is not the same as talking to a good friend. Sometimes you tell a friend something and may end up regretting it – you worry they might not keep it a secret, you may fall out, it may change the nature of your relationship or your friend may end up feeling burdened by your disclosure.
  
  In therapy, the only agenda is yours. Therapists are bound by a professional ethical framework to retain confidentiality. We are objective and offer insight and understanding. The safe space is there exclusively for you.
  
  There is no good or bad way to be in therapy. I am here to welcome you, not to judge the way you present yourself. The core of the first session is about getting to know each other and establishing whether you wish to engage in a therapeutic relationship. As an experienced psychotherapist and counsellor, I would like to offer you a safe space to heal and grow.
  
  The fact that you are deciding to enter therapy means that something in your life is already shifting.
  
  What to expect in the first session?
  
  Before you even walk through the door and set eyes on your therapist for the first time, you will probably already have plenty of preconceptions and expectations. You’ve had email contact and made certain evaluations based on the email exchange in which the first appointment was made. She may have been brief and businesslike and you might therefore fear that she is cold and uncaring. Or you might have experienced this same manner as calm and professional. You may have formed an impression about her from her website and it can be useful to be aware of the picture you’ve constructed before meeting.
  
  Discussing these preconceptions with your therapist is an effective way of addressing your fears and realising whether they are grounded in reality. It takes courage to be so direct by expressing your doubts, but your therapist will be trained to understand and address such concerns. Airing your qualms can also be a way of delaying disclosure of highly personal information before you’re ready. After all, why should you launch into your whole life story to a complete stranger before you’ve even made your mind whether they are the right therapist for you.
  
  One final factor to take into consideration before you walk through the door is the level of anxiety you are feeling. Almost every single client is nervous, although knowing this probably won’t make any difference to how anxious you are feeling. There’s no way round this one. Doing anything for the first time makes us nervous. Taking an honest look at our lives is scary. So is confiding in a stranger. The simple answer is that if we don’t push past our safety zone every now and then, we won’t develop. The long answer can be discussed with your therapist.
  
  So, you turn up at the appointed hour and you’re shown into your therapist’s consulting room. You may be surprised that your therapist neither engages you in conversation nor responds to your attempts at chit-chat en route to the room. She is not being rude, simply adhering to the principle that contact between you stays in the room. By limiting conversation to within the confines of the consulting room, your therapist is attempting to set the boundaries of your relationship. You are not friends and this is not a social visit. Your relationship is a private, professional and confidential arrangement that deserves to take place within a safe, secure setting.
  
  It can take a while to adjust to this type of relationship, particularly as it is unlike any other in our lives. It may feel as if there we know there are different rules of engagement, but we’re not quite sure what those rules are. This will almost inevitably be disconcerting. Asking someone ‘how are you?’ feels like second nature to some of us and when the other person fails to respond, it’s hard not to feel rejected or dejected. The impact of the rebuff upon you is, however, like everything else, up for discussion with your therapist.
  
  In the meantime, it may be useful to know why your therapist doesn’t respond to such a harmless, social nicety. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, although it may be the start of a very special relationship, it will never be a friendship. You won’t be going out for coffee or invited to her son’s wedding and you won’t be having long, late-night phone conversations about what you watched on television that night. In order for the relationship to be effective, as well as ethical, firm boundaries need to in place. How you respond to the limitations of the relationship will form an important part of the work you undertake in therapy*. Secondly, by not responding to the question ‘How are you?’, your therapist is giving you an important message: This is not about me. This is all about you
  
  By now, you’re sitting opposite each other. Most therapists angle their chairs so that you are not facing directly into each other’s faces – there is an appreciation that this can feel confrontational and unnerving. Gazing into a neutral space gives you time to think and allows you to avoid feeling eye-balled. You’ve noted the box of tissues by your chair and wonder whether you’re supposed to cry. Shedding tears in the first session is not uncommon. Often, there is a build up of tension and simply offloading facts and feeling, hitherto unexpressed, can bring a sense of release as well as relief. Others find it extremely challenging to cry in front of another person.
  
  But first, you have to start and knowing where to start can be tough. Do you start at the beginning? Launch into your family background? Offload your latest traumas? Confess you’d quite like to run for the door? Some therapists will prompt you with a question, usually along the lines of ‘What brings you here today?’ Others will wait to see what you bring. Once again, a silence at the beginning can be experienced by clients as unhelpful or even cruel. But by not immediately rescuing you from your discomfort, your therapist may be allowing you to experience a fundamental rule of therapy: you decide what to bring and you decide when to bring it. Obviously, if you’re still sitting there in silence ten minutes after you’ve sat down and although not quite breaking into a sweat, you are nonetheless gnawing your nails, it would be cruel to leave you floundering. A caring therapist will initiate discussion, perhaps by asking why you decided to come for counselling or by acknowledging your anxiety about beginning the process.
  
  At some stage during this session the therapist will wish to introduce and agree the terms upon you will continue to meet. This is known as The Frame and includes how you often you meet and the length of sessions (50 minutes is the normal practice). The length of the work may also be discussed. Some therapists offer a fixed number of sessions, open to review, whereas others might offer open-ended therapy. Therapists will let you have an idea of when they take their holidays or breaks. Payment will be negotiated and agreed. Therapists will advise on their policy on missed sessions; most therapists ask to be paid for missed sessions, whether or not notice has been given. Confidentiality may be mentioned, but either way it is understood that it is at the heart of the process.
  
  Please contact me for counselling in Norwich, Norfolk to discuss your situation further and how I might help.