Counselling Services Chester
I offer private face-to-face counselling services in Chester and the Wirral.
I am trained in the Person Centred approach to counselling and my sessions provide you with a safe, confidential and non-judgemental environment where you can work at your own pace, helping you explore, clarify and understand your problems and issues.
Me and My Approach
I’m Steve. I am a warm, empathic counsellor working with the person-centred approach and registered with the BACP. I have experience working with bereavement and loss, anxiety and low mood and trauma of all kinds, from childhood abuse to PTSD. I also have experience working with post addiction recovery.
Whether you are looking to achieve a specific goal or have been affected by a life event that you want help to get past, I will provide a compassionate and safe space for you to explore your issues.
How I Can Help
Person-Centred Counselling
You do not need to arrive at counselling knowing exactly what is wrong or what you want to change. Sometimes you may simply know that something does not feel right.
My role is not to tell you what to do or decide what is best for you. I offer a calm, confidential and non-judgemental space where we can explore what is happening at your pace. Through that process, you may begin to understand yourself differently, recognise patterns that have been difficult to change and find a way forward that feels right for you.
Bereavement & Loss
Grief can affect us in very different ways. You may feel overwhelmed by it, numb, angry, guilty or simply unlike yourself. You may also find that other people expect you to be coping long before you feel ready.
Loss is not limited to bereavement. The end of a relationship, losing a job, changes in health, retirement or a major change in your life can leave you grieving for what you had or for the future you expected.
Counselling gives you somewhere to talk openly about that loss, without pressure to move on or grieve in a particular way.
Trauma
You may know that something from your past is still affecting you, even if it happened many years ago. At other times, people come to counselling because of anxiety, anger, relationship difficulties or behaviours they do not fully understand, only to recognise that earlier experiences may be playing a part.
Trauma can leave us feeling unsafe, constantly alert, disconnected or reliant on ways of coping that once helped but are now causing problems of their own.
We can explore these experiences carefully and at your pace. You remain in control of what you talk about and when you talk about it.
Anxiety
Anxiety can make your world gradually become smaller.
You may find yourself overthinking conversations, avoiding situations, worrying about things that have not happened or feeling physically on edge even when there seems to be no obvious reason. Sometimes you can appear to be coping perfectly well to everyone around you while privately feeling exhausted by the effort involved.
Counselling can give you the space to understand what sits underneath your anxiety, recognise the patterns that keep it going and develop different ways of responding to it.
The aim is not to tell you simply to “stop worrying”, but to understand why the worry is there.
Post-Addiction Therapy
Stopping an addictive behaviour can be an enormous achievement, but recovery does not necessarily answer the question of why you needed that behaviour in the first place.
Alcohol, drugs, gambling or other behaviours may have become ways of managing anxiety, difficult emotions, painful experiences or simply getting through the day. When the behaviour stops, those underlying difficulties can still be there.
I work with people in recovery who want to understand themselves beyond their addiction, explore what may have driven it and build a life in which old coping strategies are less necessary.
This is about working with the person, not defining them by their addiction.
Identity & Life Changes
Sometimes the question “Who am I now?” becomes difficult to answer.
A relationship ending, retirement, redundancy, becoming a parent, changes in health, leaving the forces, getting older or simply reaching a point where the life you are living no longer feels like yours can unsettle your sense of identity.
You may also be exploring aspects of your sexuality, gender, relationships or neurodivergence and want somewhere you can speak freely without being judged or told who you should be.
Counselling can give you the space to explore those questions without needing to have the answers already. We can start with where you are and work from there.
What happens in the first session?
The first session is a chance for us to understand what has brought you to counselling and what you might need from the work. You do not need to arrive with everything neatly explained. We can begin wherever you are. I will explain confidentiality, answer any questions, and we can decide together whether the work feels like a good fit.