Welcome to the website for Heart of Norfolk Therapy

Life presents us all with challenges from time to time. Seeking professional support at such times and finding a therapist who feels right for you can be daunting. My aim with this website is to give you a sense of who I am and how I work. I hope this will help you in deciding if you’d like to get in touch and arrange an introductory session.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself.

I’m Jillian and here are a few things you might like to know about me:

I have a Masters in Counselling and a Post Graduate Certificate in Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the University of East Anglia. I’m an accredited member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy. I divide my time between private practice and a charity in Norwich, although working on Zoom now means that my clients and supervisees come from far and wide.

I also have 30 years of experience studying, practising, and teaching yoga internationally. I have always found that spirituality, self-awareness, and psychotherapy overlap and complement each other in many ways and I have trained widely in spiritual, yogic, and psychotherapeutic practices.

I try to offer a safe and welcoming space where we can sit together in presence and bring our attention and tender curiosity to all aspects of your experiencing.

Counselling and Psychotherapy

My counselling practice is firmly grounded in my primary training in the person-centred approach and influenced by my ongoing practice of Focusing.

Person-centred counselling is a humanistic talk therapy which holds that every individual has within a vast resource for self-awareness, purposeful growth and self-actualization. It means that you are at the centre of the therapy and that I attune deeply in order to know as best I can how you experience yourself, your relationships, and the world around you.  It holds that what we yearn for is to be truly seen, heard, and felt by another, and that when we experience this we change and grow in a natural way.

The person-centred approach offers a profound commitment to respecting the individual, acknowledging and honouring moment-to-moment experiencing, and accessing and following your own inner truth.

I also work from a Focusing-Oriented approach. This type of psychotherapy has a person-centred approach as its basis.  We may well spend time talking just as we do in counselling. But the invitation here is to slow down and pay closer attention to your inner bodily experience. Research shows that this ability to attend inwardly is the most important element in effective therapy and moves us past what we already know about ourselves into new insight and discovery.

I work mainly with adult individuals and couples.

Focusing

What is it?

Focusing is a simple bodily process for emotional healing. It listens to the messages of the body and tunes in to an inner felt sense of knowing. Many of us rely so heavily on the mind and intellect to get through life and resolve our difficulties that we can end up disconnected from the wisdom of our inner body.

During counselling, we mostly engage our minds when talking things through, and this is often very helpful. But knowing something cognitively can only take us so far, and sometimes leaves us circling repetitively in things we already know. Discovering new insights about ourselves may require something more than our rational minds, especially since repetitive thinking and intense rationalising are strategies we use to avoid knowing and feeling our deeper wounds.

Focusing holds that the intricacy of living is far greater than any concept or thought can convey, and that a pre-cognitive ‘knowing’ is implicit in everything we do. If we shift our attention away from our habitual thinking patterns and pay attention to this inner knowing, we can feel it in our being and let it guide our living.

Focusing brings us gently back to the subtleties of the body. It helps us tune in to that felt sense of knowing, teaches us to listen deeply to our inner world, and to relate to it with curiosity and compassion. We discover that our ‘I’ is bigger than all the issues we carry within us. We find a peaceful space that holds all our issues and allows us to relate to them from a safe distance. Focusing works because the life force within us naturally wants to flow and move forward toward resolution and wholeness.

In a world that seems to over-value rational thinking at the expense of our inner somatic experiencing, Focusing can return us to a sense of connection with ourselves and enable us to live from a place within us that is deeper than thought. All we need do is step aside and listen tenderly to the messages from the body.

How can I learn Focusing?

The beauty of Focusing is that you learn it for yourself and once it is learnt, you have a skill for life that you can use by yourself whenever you want. In fact, it is intended to be practised either alone or with a partner. You are learning to trust your own inner knowing and not to rely on any therapist or other person’s opinion.

You may like to try a single one-to-one session to give you a taste of the Focusing process or to spend time with a particular problem in a Focusing way. If you would like to learn Focusing for yourself,  I offer a 5-week course of 90-minute sessions. This will cover all the basics and should give you the confidence to practise at home on your own.

Many people practise Focusing with a companion. If you have a friend or partner you would like to learn with, I offer a 6-week course of 90-minute sessions where you will also learn the art of being an attuned empathic listener in order to support your partner’s focusing.

I also offer workshops and CPD training days. Please contact me for more details.

SUPERVISION

My intention as a Person-Centred Supervisor is to hold you, the therapist, at the centre of a space that aspires to be both nurturing and developmental. A Person-Centred Approach to Supervision is founded on empathic listening and unconditional acceptance and aims to provide a space where we can explore and review your way of being with your clients and in the world. I believe it has a unique potential to enrich our working relationships with self, within Supervision, and with our clients. It aims to stand back a little from client narrative in order to make more room for the multi-layered nature of process and relationship. If Focusing is a practice that appeals to you, we can use specific exercises to facilitate a more felt exploration of your work.

I welcome Supervisees from any theoretical orientation. I find that a Focusing stance in Supervision places more emphasis on phenomenological exploration rather than on theory. It encourages us to stay close to our own and the client’s experience rather than interpreting, generalising, or depersonalizing with theory.

Trainees are also welcome.

I recognise the importance of finding a Supervisor who feels right for you. To help you with this, I offer a free initial consultation via Zoom.

Fees

Sessions are offered weekly, preferably at the same time. Each session lasts for 60 minutes and includes time for payment or other business. I arrange sessions solely with the person seeking counselling and work mainly with adult individuals and couples.

COUNSELLING & PSYCHOTHERAPY  
Introductory session £30
Counselling/Psychotherapy session £50
6 sessions prepaid £250
FOCUSING  
Single session £50
Focusing by yourself course Contact for details
Focusing with a partner course Contact for details
SUPERVISION  
60 minutes  £50
90 minutes £70

PAYMENT METHODS

BACS Cash Paypal

Contact

Email Me

jillian@heartofnorfolktherapy.co.uk

I’d love to hear from you.

Please email me for an an initial free consultation via Zoom where me might discuss what you hope to get from counselling.  Then you might feel ready to arrange an introductory session with me.  I offer your first 60-minute session for just £30 so that you can get a feel for how I work and whether you would like to continue with counselling. Email is the best way to contact me and I will reply within 2 working days. Currently most sessions are via Zoom but I can see a few people in person so let me know if that is what you prefer. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Time and again, people transcend the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically.

Marshall Rosenberg