Welcome to
Elisa Morris Counselling and Psychotherapy
Counsellor, Psychotherapist and Supervisor in Bath
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity"
- Albert Einstein
Hello and welcome to my website. I have been working as a counsellor and psychotherapist in private practice for more than 15 years and am always interested to meet new people. Whatever difficulty or challenge you are facing, I will listen carefully and try to understand things from your perspective, and to help you find the best way forward. Talking things through with a professional can really make a difference.
I also offer clinical supervision and enjoy working with other therapists to support their work and professional development. Do contact me to find out more.
When do people need talking therapy?
People tend to look for counselling or psychotherapy for lots of different reasons. You may be feeling anxious, stressed or depressed. Perhaps you're struggling with a relationship, or you've lost a loved one. Maybe an event has turned your life upside down such as a redundancy, a divorce or an affair. Or you may be feeling tired from struggling for years to appear as though everything is ok. You may have been trying to hide your true self in some way, fearful of being judged or criticised.
You might be encountering one of life’s many transitions, such as leaving the parental home, getting married, starting a family, or adjusting to retirement, an empty nest or ill health.
How does counselling and psychotherapy work?
Therapy can often prove to be a turning point for people. It offers a different approach. Rather than trying to get rid of symptoms or run away from problems, therapy encourages people to turn towards the difficulty, to try to understand what they are facing and to find new and different ways of engaging with the world.
Troubled thoughts and feelings are an inherent part of what it is to be human, and if we can take the time to be curious, exploring our difficulties can lead to insight, healing and a softening attitude to ourselves.
My Work
I am an experienced counsellor, psychotherapist and supervisor working in Bath. I work with adults, both face-to-face and online, and am registered with the UK Council of Psychotherapy (UKCP).
I work at a centre called Openings, which is based on the top floor of a building in George Street, Bath. I have been in private practice for 15 years, having worked previously at St Augustine's Medical Practice in Keynsham and Saltford.
If you have any questions or would like to book an initial appointment for counselling, psychotherapy or supervision, please call on 07962 889881, or email me through the contact form below. I look forward to hearing from you.
About Me
When I meet a new client for the first time, I try to remember how I felt when I started therapy. I was 28 and feeling stuck, unable to find a way forward with either my job or my relationship. I had lost not only a sense of direction but also a sense of who I was.
I knew nothing about psychotherapy then. It was the mid-90s, the internet had barely got going. I rang the British Psychoanalytic Society and was offered an assessment appointment. A couple of weeks later I began therapy with a woman who I later discovered was a Jungian Analyst.
I worked with my therapist for several years and it changed my life, and what I mean by that is it changed my inner life. It changed the way I came to experience the world and the people in it. Instead of regularly feeling left out, rejected, dismissed, depressed, I began to feel that I had a place. And I began to let people in.
Therapy is hard. It takes people to their difficult places, to the holes in the road that they regularly fall into, so that they can learn how to find their own way out. Many times along the way I thought to myself, how the hell did I get into this?
But it was also meaningful, poignant, life-affirming. Another person was listening to me, understanding me, willing to fight for me even if that meant being brutally honest with me. Ultimately it is this relationship between client and therapist which repairs and heals.
These days I recommend people find a therapist through the UK Council for Psychotherapy, where I am now registered, or the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. Many potential clients trouble over the jargon and the method. I say to them, find a therapist who you feel comfortable with.
I trained for five years at the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, CCPE, in Little Venice, London. There I gained a Foundation qualification before completing the four-year Diploma in Transpersonal Counselling and Psychotherapy in December 2004.
I offer supervision to psychotherapists, counsellors and others in the helping professions, having completed a diploma in supervision at the Centre for Supervision and Team Development in Bath. I have worked as a supervisor at Cruse Swindon.
Things That Can Help
When I went to therapy I remember looking in awe at this middle-aged woman who sat with me week after week apparently in a state of constant calm. I was convinced she had life completely sorted. Now I have a better idea of what the inner life of a therapist is really like.
Working with clients can trigger intense moments of anxiety, self-criticism, confusion, fear. While I don't usually admit to moments of inner turmoil during a session, part of my work as a therapist is to remain open to my own experience. It is not a matter of presenting a false persona, I have to be real. So I have had to find things that support me to remain as calm and considered as possible. These are some of the things that have helped me:
THERAPY
It may sound like a sales-pitch for a therapist to declare that therapy helps. But the reason therapists can sit with others during this challenging process is because they've been through it themselves. Psychotherapists will have completed weekly therapy for five or six years during their training, sometimes more. They need to be familiar with their own issues, trigger points, dark places. I worked with my therapist, a Jungian analyst for seven years, meeting three times a week for some of those years. It was, at times, a gruelling process. My experience of her intense gaze triggered hellish dreams, set mostly in Nazi concentration camps, until I realised that the person who was persecuting me was not her, not even my aggressive boss or my angry father, but myself. I gradually became less judgemental of myself and others.
MEDITATION
I was lucky enough to have my first experience of meditation in Nepal. Aged 18 and incredibly naive, I travelled with a school friend in south-east Asia. In Kathmandu we signed up for a class with a Buddhist monk. She taught us the art of watching our thoughts cross our minds as if they were clouds moving through a blue sky. The suggestion that we didn't have to identify with, pursue or even understand every thought we had was transforming. Thoughts will come, and we can let them go. Twenty years later in Bristol I completed an eight-week mindfulness course, a great starting place for beginners, and now I continue my practice with the help of tarabrach.com.
CREATIVITY
Carl Jung had a particular appreciation for the power of creative imagination and went so far as to suggest that, if ignored, this frustrated force within us can cause illness. There are many ways in which people explore and express their creativity, ranging from clothes, gardening, sports to the more traditional artistic fields of drawing, painting, making. For me at the moment, it is tennis and creative writing. People often struggle with their creativity, being quick to judge themselves as no good. And I am no different. I have to constantly work at my mental game in both these pursuits, learning to give myself permission to have a go, to appreciate what I have done, and to find value in pursuing a personal passion without hope or fear of success or failure.
BOOKS AND FILMS
Finding stories which speak to and inspire us can be life affirming. So many books and films are stories of personal transformation, characters finding growth and wisdom by tackling the obstacles in their lives, in ways which resonate deeply with the process that takes place in the therapy room. Different movies speak to different people and while I love an arty or highbrow film, I also have a passion for Kung Fu Panda. When I'm struggling with a lack of self-belief, I will return to the story of Po, a clumsy, overweight panda, adoptive son of a goose, who is on a journey of transformation to become the Dragon Warrior. He experiences so many valuable lessons along the way; when his enthusiasm rather than his talent results in him being proclaimed the Dragon Warrior, when Master Shifu realises the way to train Po is to make use of his insatiable appetite for dumplings, when he is given the highly-prized Dragon Scroll only to discover it is a blank piece of paper. Discovering there is no magic answer to life, he has to learn to believe in himself.
MY LOCATION
I work at a centre called Openings, which is based on the top floor of a building in George Street, Bath. I have been in private practice for 15 years, having worked previously at St Augustine's Medical Practice in Keynsham and Saltford.
If you have any questions or would like to book an initial appointment for counselling, psychotherapy or supervision, please call on 07962 889881, or email me through the contact form below. I look forward to hearing from you.
FEES & AVAILABILITY
My fee is £55 per session.
For further information, or to make an appointment, please call me on my mobile 07962 889881. If I am unable to answer, please leave me a message and I will return your call as soon as possible.
Alternatively, you can email me through the contact form below.
YOU MAY NOT KNOW IT, BUT YOU’VE ALREADY TAKEN THE FIRST STEP...
It can be scary and confusing making the decision to contact a counsellor or therapist, but in my experience people will struggle with a mental health issue, a personal crisis or problems with a relationship for much longer than is healthy. Sometimes a friend has proved a source of comfort, but this help can only go so far. Realising that resolving a problem requires something more means you have actually already taken the first step towards improving your life.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
This is a chance for you to meet me and see if you would feel comfortable working with me. The relationship between us will prove a key part in the success of our working together. This session is also time for you to explore what kind of support you are looking for and what you might gain from counselling or psychotherapy. However you may not be completely sure of what you want at the start.
If you wish to proceed we would meet weekly, ideally at the same time each week. Once a session time has been agreed between us, I offer a commitment to keep that time and space solely for you.
Counselling is usually shorter-term and focuses on working through a solution to a particular difficulty. I would usually recommend a minimum of 10 weekly sessions.
Psychotherapy tends to be more in-depth and longer term, and can be open-ended. This allows time for a deeper process of change to take place, and an ending can be discussed when the client feels ready.
Psychotherapy may involve looking back to past experiences to understand present difficulties, but this is not always so. The depth of the work can also come from focusing on a client’s whole way of being in the world. This may include looking at a client’s thought processes, unconscious beliefs and patterns of behaviour, and their relationships with themselves and others.
Psychotherapy can be open-ended, so allowing the client to have the time and flexibility to end when they are ready to do so. Typically this may range from six months to several years.
I trained for five years at the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy Education, CCPE, in London, gaining an UKCP-accredited Diploma as well as a Foundation qualification.
After moving to the Bath area, I set up my private practice in 2009. I am a member of Openings, which is a group of practitioners who share rooms at Princes Buildings on George Street.
From 2010-2013 I also worked for St Augustine's GP practice in Keynsham, offering short-term counselling to NHS patients. I then worked privately from Saltford surgery for many years.
I offer supervision to psychotherapists, counsellors and others in the helping professions. Having gained a diploma in supervision at the Centre for Supervision and Team Development in Bath, I work with individuals and groups. I have also worked as a supervisor at Cruse Swindon.
While my psychotherapy training has been Humanistic and Transpersonal, I now adopt an Integrative approach to my work as a therapist and supervisor having been influenced by several other models, including Attachment Theory. I am particularly interested in the use of the therapeutic relationship to bring about change.
I am accredited by the UK Council of Psychotherapy, UKCP. I adhere to the code of conduct set out by the CCPE.
CONTACT ME
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about how counselling or psychotherapy works, or to arrange an initial assessment appointment. This enables us to discuss the reasons you are thinking of coming to counselling, whether it could be helpful for you and whether I am the right therapist to help.
You can also call me on 07962 889881 if you would prefer to leave a message or speak to me first. I am happy to discuss any queries or questions you may have prior to arranging an initial appointment.
All enquires are usually answered within 24 hours, and all contact is strictly confidential and uses secure phone and email services.
© Elisa Morris Counselling and Psychotherapy
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