Irene Steele
Primary Care Counsellor
Ellesmere Surgery, Shropshire
Much Wenlock/Cressage, Shropshire
South Hermitage, Shrewsbury

To understand better how counselling works, it’s worth thinking about what it is not. It’s not the same as going to the doctor or another ‘expert’ where you expect to be advised, instructed, interpreted or directed. Our relationship will be some what different from this. Between us the power will be more equally shared. You will be in charge of the agenda. I will do my best to understand what you want to achieve, and help you to achieve it.

What can you expect when you first attend a counselling session?
To be offered a safe, non-judgemental place in which to explore and understand your grief/distress/pain/loneliness. My role will be to facilitate your journey.
Lots of clients come to counselling asking questions such as: why do I seem to be the only one struggling with life/relationships/children/work? Who am I? Where am I going? What is my life about? I feel lost; I feel out of step with the rest of the world.

To enable me to help you answer or understand those questions I will draw on my ten years experience and training in Psycho-dynamic Counselling, Gestalt Counselling, Person-centred Counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Creative Art Therapy. My interest is in helping you understand yourself and to explore how your life can be as satisfying and happy as possible. Creating and establishing a safe therapeutic relationship offering empathy and compassion. I see myself as a facilitator of increased awareness, participating as an honoured guest on my clients personal journeys and offering myself from time to time as a multi-dimensional mirror into which they may choose to look as they begin to learn that I will not judge or threaten but will genuinely care and accept all they may choose to bring.