Joey Lessem - Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Psychotherapist - Horsham and London

Psychotherapy will mean different things to different people. For some there will be a distinction between psychotherapy and counselling. For those supporting this view counselling may be more appropriate for a particular life event which has occurred and which may require brief or short-term counselling. Some of the typical problems that may bring people for counselling may include bereavement and grief, relationship difficulties or breakdown, panic or anxiety attacks, eating disorders, redundancy or stress in the workplace. Psychotherapy on the other hand may involve a more long-term commitment, anything from twenty-four sessions or more and may be more appropriate when the person concerned has problems that originated much earlier in their life and which have impacted on their present behaviour. Some of the problems that people may bring for psychotherapy may include personality disorders – for example obsessive compulsive disorder - self esteem problems arising from childhood deprivation and abuse, and depression.

My particular orientation towards counselling and psychotherapy is very much geared towards the client and their needs and preferences. I work from this perspective not only because of my training which is integrative but also because of my personality. I like to work collaboratively with clients as I always consider them to be the best expert on their life history. With the benefit of such knowledge I find myself better able to guide or suggest ways of going forward that may be rewarding for clients. In essence I integrate models of therapy which include a review of the past on the one hand to explore the source of problems, but on the other hand I very much believe in helping people to change by trying new ways of thinking and behaving.

For many people a good way of beginning psychotherapy is to identify the patterns of behaviour (which will inevitably include a combination of the way they think, feel and behave) which are negative as these sequences will end up with people feeling, if not as badly as they first felt, but in some cases, worse. These sequences are called in one of the therapies I practise, ”procedures”. (See under Cognitive Analytic Therapy or CAT)

To help you identify the particular “procedures” you may be enacting, or in some cases, repeating time and time again, do fill in the questionnaire which I have included in my website. This is called The Psychotherapy File, which you can download here.

Note: The file needs Adobe Acrobat Reader to open. If you do not have this installed on your machine click here to obtain it.