Silverstone Counselling & Therapy

Have you noticed how patterns of behaviour repeat themselves?  Not just in our lifetime, but over the generations. Behavioural patterns may be repeated from one job to another, or from one marriage or relationship to another. Our behaviours, thoughts and attitudes are influenced by many factors including our childhood experiences, attachment to caregivers, our worldviews, exposure to trauma and other important but subtle influencers.  Counselling therapy is not about 'fixing' a situation or a person.  As human being we are all flawed. We all carry baggage.  We all have histories, a part of which we may prefer to erase. But even the most traumatic of experiences can facilitate personal growth, given the right room to grow with the right conditions.  Through gentle curiosity and respect Angela works with you to provide these conditions, to support you, challenge you and help you to find the path of your choosing and to take active steps to realize a new version of yourself.

As a result of her almost 30 years as a lawyer, Angela often attracts clients who have been further traumatized by the legal system, feeling dragged through the impersonal and adversarial process of litigation, be this in the family courts or as a result of personal injury or other court processes. What may seem like the unrelenting barrage of expert opinions of your life (in which only you are the expert) adds further suffering to an already hard emotional and physical toll.  Angela works with you to process this additional layer of trauma, feelings of anger, resentment, guilt, paranoia or other negative emotions and unhelpful thoughts and behaviour to allow yourself to move onto a new chapter of your life.

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Couple's Counselling

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As a result of years of mediation experience it was a natural development for Angela to be drawn to couple's counselling and the improvement or maintenance of other family relationships. This may include strained relationships, difficulties with forgiveness or estrangement. Her work is influenced by the theories and practices of the Gottmans' Sounds Relationship House, Sue Johnson's Emotional Focused Therapy, Family Systems Theory, Bowen Family Systems and Internal Family Systems Theory and an eclectic mix of evidence based theories and practices to meet the clients where they are at and to take them where they would like to go.  Couples may come to therapy for a wide variety of reasons: to improve communication and increase intimacy, for maintenance of a healthy relationship, especially through periods of stress or transition, or to consciously uncouple, maintaining a respectful relationship or simply to minimize unnecessary stress and anxiety.

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Divorce, Separation and Co-Parenting

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Another natural area of interest and development is the positive facilitation of a respectful separation and formation of  healthy boundaries for the very important purpose of effective co-parenting. The breakdown of a relationship, even in the most amicable situation, is emotionally, physically and often financially hard.  Children may be caught between parents who are themselves struggling to make sense of the new reality, and may understandably have reduced capacity for parenting. A client may need therapeutic interventions to heal from traumatic relationship(s) or ongoing support to co-parent where mental health concerns or certain personality traits or attachment styles make a challenging situation seem impossible. 

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