Counselling Service

Your first meeting will be an 'assessment' appointment with one of our Greenwich Time to Talk counsellors. Your appointment will last 50 minutes and you will be encouraged to discuss things that are troubling you. The assessment counsellor will ask you some questions about your life and your family to help you reflect on the background of your distress.

It's not unusual to feel upset or distressed during this session and afterwards, your counsellor will not mind at all if you cry or show your distress.

After your assessment session, you will be allocated to a counsellor, who you will see for eight sessions. You will see the same counsellor, usually at the same time, in the same place, either weekly or fortnightly.

It will be up to you, with the counsellor's help, to choose what you would like to talk about in each session. You will be encouraged to think about things and about the way you behave, plus continue to think about them outside of your sessions too.

Counselling can often stir up difficult and painful emotions and it can take some time to work through them, but your therapist will speak to you about why you are upset and help you to change your thinking to then change your behaviour.

• Losses
• Bereavement
• Depression
• Adjusting to major life changes
• Past issues that get in the way of your present life
• Short term, focused counselling is not likely to help with these issues:
• Long term, enduring mental health problems
• Long history of social and emotional deprivation without an acute focus
• Stresses of being in a long-term caring role
• Financial and social problems
• Housing problems
• Immigration issues
• Involvement in legal processes