Supervision is offered to counsellors working with individuals or couples, sex therapists either qualified or in training. My main modality is psychodynamic, but I also work behaviourally and with mentalisation. I have 30 years of experience in the field of counselling, psychotherapy, and personal growth.
I believe supervision is vital to the integrity and safety of our work as counsellors and therapists. It is also a form of self-care essential, to avoid burnout or compassion fatigue. As a supervisor, I offer you a safe space for you to process your feelings or issues arising from the work. In addition, I also offer support and mentoring to help you set up if you are just starting out, or to promote your practice and develop your skills.
BACP defines supervision as follows:
The Ethical Framework defines supervision as: “A specialised form of mentoring provided for practitioners responsible for undertaking challenging work with people. Supervision is provided to ensure standards, enhance quality, advance learning, stimulate creativity, and support the sustainability and resilience of the work being undertaken.”
Supervision offers you a reflective space, in which to examine your methodology, your fitness to work both in terms of your own mental health and your level of competency. I believe all too often general counsellors take on any and every issue, whereas when working with either children or couples, as an example, one should think carefully if that work is within their level of competency, experience etc. In all this supervision can guide and support you, this will ultimately benefit your clients and provide safety all round.
Therefore, all aspects of your practice should be open to supervision.
ALL supervision is delivered online only.
EMDR Therapy
Additional Services
Essentially Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) involves using bi-lateral stimulation to help the brain process distressing experiences. It is not a traditional type of psychotherapy. However, it is growing in popularity and is used most often in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD can occur after one-off incidents such as a physical assault, rape, a car accident, or ongoing trauma such as military combat, domestic violence, or childhood sexual abuse. EMDR is used to help people recover from the distressing symptoms experienced in PTSD such as flashbacks, intrusive thoughts or images, depression, anxiety, and even angry outbursts.
In traditional therapy, it was assumed that deep emotional pain can take many years to heal. Whereas various studies in which EMDR was used, have demonstrated that the mind can in fact heal from emotional or mental trauma, at a similar rate as the body can recover from physical trauma. For example, in physical injuries such as a cut or a break, the body quickly reacts to repair itself, if this is prevented or blocked in some way the wound never heals completely, but once the impediment is removed then the body’s own healing processes take over and full recovery is possible. Similarly, when the mind is traumatised, a block can develop often resulting in PTSD as explained above. EMDR removes this block and the mind then heals naturally and spontaneously as it is designed to do.
What happens during an EMDR session?
Although there are some necessary preliminaries to be gone through, during the actual EMDR session your therapist will help you address a target memory (this will have been pre-arranged) and using an appropriate method such as her asking you to follow her hand or an item on the screen, she will cause you to move your eyes right to left and back again many times. When the movement stops you will be asked what you are feeling and based upon your answer the eye moment may be repeated more times. Sometimes headphones are used to provide bi-tonal sounds in the ears as well as bi lateral tapping.
Very often the result of such a session is a sense of peace and compassion towards oneself, many clients speak of a sense of ‘a weight being lifted from me’ or ‘my chest is no longer tight’ and ‘when I think about that memory, it no longer distresses me.’
Flash Technique
Flash is a technique developed by Dr Philip Mansfield and his associates, Dr Mansfield originally trained with the creator of EMDR, he subsequently developed Flash as a way of working with clients who may become too distressed or are unable to speak about their trauma. Flash still involves Bilateral Stimulation as does EMDR but does not require a person to talk about the trauma. This method also achieves fast relief from symptoms and resolution of distressing emotions.
Lena Fenton offers, fast-acting, long-lasting treatment for PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Sexual abuse, and Trauma plus other mental conditions.
Overall, EMDR is considered a safe therapy. It is recommended by professionals and organizations such as the American Psychological Association (APA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
