Dr. David Mair Counselling and Psychotherapy

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What happens in therapy?
2. How long will I have to come for?
3. How much does it cost to have a therapy session?
4. How confidential is therapy?
5. How do I know that the service you provide is going to help me?
6. What sort of therapy do you offer?
7. What is the difference between counselling and psychotherapy?

1. Therapy is a special relationship where the focus remains on you and what is happening in your life. Therapy is different from other helping professions in that I do not - as a rule - give you advice or tell you what to do. This is because my aim is to help you think about your situation in such a way as to develop greater awareness and understanding, and with this awareness and understanding to decide whether you wish to make any changes. My role is to help you to think more clearly - or from a different perspective - and to become more aware of your own thoughts, feelings and behaviour. I do not judge or tell you what to do.(Back to top)

2. This depends on what your needs are. Some people find that after only a very few sessions they have some clarity and focus and are ready to end the therapy. Other people value the ongoing support and relationship with me and will continue to come for weeks, months, or even years. There is no 'one-size-fits-all' when it comes to therapy. The frequency and duration of your contact with me is something that we will review from time to time as we work together. Ultimately, however, a therapist should never tell you that you have to keep coming for sessions - you are always free to leave when you feel ready. At the same time, it is helpful for us to agree mutually in advance when the therapy will end so that we have time to bring things to a close.(Back to top)

3. I charge £47 for individuals , and £55 per session for couples. If you are able to give me a week's notice I do not charge for missed appointments.(Back to top)

4. In order for therapy to be effective, it has to be confidential. This is something that I take very seriously. This level of confidentiality is one of the main ways in which therapy differs from many other forms of helping - for example, talking to friends or family can rarely offer the same degree of confidentiality as talking to a counsellor. Because of this confidentiality, you will find that - as you get used to coming for therapy - you are freer to talk about whatever you wish to. No therapist can offer 100% confidentiality: there are some situations where the law requires disclosure of risk (e.g. certain child protection issues) and in common with most other therapists, there are some situations where I may not be able to keep total confidentiality. In particular, if someone tells me that they are thinking of harming themselves in a way that I believe puts them at serious risk, or if someone tells me that they are doing something that could put others at risk, I may not be able to keep such information confidential. However, breaking confidentiality is rare, and only happens after talking to the person concerned. Any information disclosed to a third party (for example, a doctor) is kept to an essential minimum.(Back to top)

5. This is an interesting question! Seeing a therapist is not like seeing a doctor where you remain fairly passive and the doctor 'treats' you. And 'being helped' means differnt things for different people. Different therapy approaches will help different people, but I do not believe that there is a way of pre-determining which counsellor or which approach will be most helpful to you. Ultimately, you are the one who will decide whether therapy is beneficial for you and this will be a very personal decision. Naturally, you want to be sure that the person you are seeing is professionally qualified and sensitive to you and your situation so you have a right to ask certain questions of any counsellor you contact: - how experienced are you in helping people with similar issues to myself? - are you supervised regularly? - what happens if I am not happy with the therapy? A good therapist will happily answer such questions. Another good sign would be a therapist who reviews with you every so often how you feel the therapy is going, and whether there is anything else that could make the sessions more helpful. This is something that I do with all my clients.(Back to top)

6. My therapy is based on a non-pathologising understanding of people. I recognise that all of us encounter 'problems in living': this does not mean that there is something intrinsically wrong with us as individuals. Rather it reflects the fact that life is unpredictable and throws challenges at us which we may struggle to overcome alone. Sometimes the strategies that we adopt to deal with these challenges may turn out to be unhelpful in the long-term. Equally, our culture and society may impose ways of thinking and being which exacerbate the problems we encounter. I therefore believe in the importance of exploring wider sociological factors that impinge on individuals, intensifying their problems. I value a wide range of approaches to thinking about 'problems-in-living': amongst others, I draw on psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural and existential/phenomenological ideas about who we are, the sources of human suffering, and ways of responding to this suffering.(Back to top)

7. Psychotherapy is a generic term that describes many different ways of helping people who are dealing with emotional or mental distress. For instance, the prescription of antidepressants by a GP could be seen as a form of psychotherapy because it is one way of helping someone to deal with depression. Sometimes there is an assumption that psychotherapy takes longer than counselling, or that it deals with deeper issues. However, this assumption is probably based on the confusion of psychotherapy with psychoanalysis which is a specific (usually long-term) way of working with patients. Counselling, therefore, is just one form of psychotherapy - a way of working which is about enabling you to think through issues which have been troubling you, and which may lead you to make some decisions to do things differently in future.(Back to top)