Listening in a way that allows them to point out patterns that the rest of us miss when we're in the thick of a crisis so we can start to take more control of our lives.
Understanding the deeper motives that we don't always spot so that we can begin to be more constructive in the way that we manage our feelings and behaviour.
Not giving advice but letting us find our own solutions with a little bit of guidance on where to concentrate our efforts.

Our 200 clients

are just ordinary people who need help with a crisis, people like:

Madeleine

Madeleine and her partner, both successful young professionals, were getting dangerously into debt. But Madeleine only discovered how bad things were when she found a bill for a credit card that she didn't even know her partner had. Then the gas, electricity and water companies and the council started sending final demands and the bank threatened to repossess their house.

Her partner had been spending his own money and much of Madeleine's. She felt not only betrayed but also bewildered as to how she had let things get so bad and how little she now seemed to know her partner. There was no-one among her family or friends who she could speak to as they had all warned her against him though she had ignored what they said and vigorously defended him because she thought she had a soul-mate. Now she had no-one to turn to for help.

Madeleine contacted Chiltern Counselling because she saw a job advert in her local paper. In fact, when she rang up at first, she pretended that she was enquiring about the post and it took another phone call for her to say what she really wanted: help to sort out the mess that her life was fast becoming.

Through a series of 12 one-to-one sessions with a professional counsellor, Madeleine explored her situation and her options for the future. She grew in confidence and insight throughout the treatment and by the end was on top of her debts - though far from having discharged them - and had given her partner an ultimatum that he either shaped up or left their index. Madeleine had found her assertive self and was ready to face the challenges of the next phase of her life.

Rashid

Look at Rashid today and you see a successful local businessman making an important contribution to his family and his community, employing over 20 people and acting as a role model for younger men struggling with the conflict between their Southeast Asian tradition and Western culture.

Go back only a few years and look again at Rashid. You see someone drowning in the currents and eddies of that cultural conflict. "I didn't know how to handle this dual identity" says Rashid. "I was Asian and British and British Asian. Believe me, that's not an easy act to pull off ⅀ you can get very confused and do some really crazy things."

For Rashid, those crazy things were dabbling in drugs and petty crime with the inevitable result of being in with the wrong crowd and on the wrong side of the law. He knew it couldn't go on but he didn't know what to do. 'If you've got a brain and a bit of education, you have better choices and you have a kind of insight that you can do better for yourself. But how to get started?" Luckily for Rashid, the mother of one of his old school friends saw the way things were going for him and had a quiet word with someone that she knew had links to Chiltern Counselling. Then she asked Rashid if he needed someone to talk to. Once he'd got over the embarrassment that came from thinking that she meant herself, he agreed to go to an appointment with one of our counsellors.

He's never looked back. "You know, when you're young like that you're already angry with everyone - your parents because they don't understand, your mates because they don't want to understand and the whole of the world around you because everything seems to be going ok for them. It wasn't until I'd sat down with this counsellor that I started to see that it was me that didn't understand and slowly I began to piece it together. I suppose you could say that I grew up. It took me over a year and sometimes I couldn't face going to the sessions but the counsellor never judged me and just picked up where we'd left off and let me talk about how I felt. It was a lifesaver, yes, I think you could say that it saved my life and made the lives of the people I love much better. We still disagree, my dad and I, about lots of things. But at least now we respect each other and our opinions."

Morgan

At the other end of the spectrum from Madeleine, and in many ways much more vulnerable, is Morgan. Living in one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the area, Morgan and his family face a lot of problems that don't worry most sections of society: they can't get credit and Morgan is in and out of work despite the buoyant economy.

Morgan is an unskilled labourer and although he can turn his hand to most things, his lack of skills and basic education make it hard for him to get permanent work or to set up on his own as more and more of his old schoolmates are doing these days. He gets stressed when he has to sign on, it's humiliating, he says and then he has to tell the kids that not only can they not have the latest gadget but they can't have an ice cream when the family goes for a walk in the park or extra treats when they go shopping.

Morgan has done a bit of time inside for burglary and theft but isn't a hardened criminal as some of his other exℿschoolmates have become. He loves his wife and kids and only wants the best for them. But he has a fiery temper and, though ice cream is off the menu he does sometimes find the money to go down the pub or get a few cans in at home, which is a problem because then his frustration boils over and he lashes out at the very people he cares about most. And that's dangerous because Social Services were already worried about his kids because, although there were genuine explanations, they seemed to turn up in A&E a lot more often than kids their age should be doing.

So when his probation officer recommended that Morgan seek some help, he was nervous about going through the blue door into Chiltern Counselling. He didn't want the shame of not sorting it out himself and he didn't know how to sit and talk about what bothered him. In fact he'd spent most of his adult life pretending that nothing bothered him and that he could take whatever blows life might throw at him.

But, once Morgan learned to trust his counsellor, he blossomed. He had great insight into his problems and a natural intelligence that helped him uncover what drove him to behave impulsively sometimes. He struggled, as many people do, to believe that he could change but in the course of a couple of years he got his life under control. He's never going to be rich but he's using the local college to get some basic skills - he couldn't actually read or write properly, he finally admitted ⅀ and he's hoping to do some vocational training. His wife and kids don't actually know anything about the time he spends behind the blue door but they're getting to like the person Morgan's becoming. And so is Morgan.

On This Page

The Organisation

Accreditation

Our Counsellors and Therapists

They are skilled in

Our 200 clients

Madeleine

Rashid

Morgan