Have you found counselling or therapy difficult?

There are lots of reasons why accessing counselling or therapy can be difficult. You may have tried in the past and found the tools and techniques your counsellor used didn’t really suit you. It might have felt frustrating to have to educate your therapist on things relating to your identity or your experiences of the world. You may have worried about disclosing things about your life in case you’re judged as being weird or deviant. You might just have not have been physically well enough to attend therapy or been concerned that your body would not fit in the space available. 

Zoe is passionate about making space for you. Whether it’s your neurotype, your relationship style, your identity or your physical challenges that have made it hard for you to engage with counselling in the past, they want to find ways to make therapy work for you. Working online, by phone, and in-person in Swansea, they want to understand how to make counselling accessible so you can benefit from it. 

They specialise in working with gender, sexuality and relationship minorities. This includes people under the queer* umbrella as well as those who are in relationship styles that are different from the monogamous norm. They are a neurodivergent counsellor and are keen to make therapy available to people who know or suspect they are autistic, ADHD, have brain injuries or experienced early childhood trauma.

In addition to identity and neurotype, Zoe works to include people who have difficulty accessing therapy due to physical limitations. Chronic illness and physical disability as well as body size can cause people very real accessibility issues when trying to find a counsellor who can accommodate them. Zoe can talk to you about what accommodations you might need, including physical adjustments for face-to-face sessions and other amendments to usual ways of working such as online work, shorter sessions to accommodate chronic pain, fatigue or brain fog or longer sessions for ADHD clients who need to talk at more length and take longer to get into the flow of sessions. 

_{*Queer can be a contentious label for many people. Previously used as a slur and associated with homophobic bullying, it has been reclaimed by many as a badge of pride for anyone who is sexuality, gender, relationship or physically atypical, especially those people who have multiple intersecting identities that feel laborious to list.}

Some helpful labels

Zoe is non-binary, neurodivergent, and has experience with chronic illness and fatigue. They are body- and fat-positive, anti-racist, gender- and sexuality-affirming in their practice and work from a position of making clear power dynamics and opposing oppression of all kinds. 

They predominantly work with LGBTQIA+ people, neurodivergent people and people from alternative or marginalised communities.