The stories shared here are drawn from real counselling experiences and are included to offer a sense of what counselling can look like and the different reasons people choose to come.
Each story is shared with the client’s permission, and I am very grateful to those who have allowed me to share something of their experience with others in this way. To protect confidentiality, all stories have been anonymised, with identifying details changed or removed.
I was tired of pushing through
I had spent a long time trying to push myself to be different.
I experienced a lot of anxiety, particularly around other people, and I had come to see that as something wrong with me. I thought I needed to become more confident, more outgoing and better at coping with situations that other people seemed to find easy.
Counselling helped me look at that differently.
Instead of treating my anxiety as something I needed to get rid of, we became curious about it. I began to understand what it might be protecting me from and to notice the expectations I had placed on myself.
We also talked about parts of me that had become lost underneath all that effort — my creativity, my strengths, the things I enjoyed and what I actually wanted from my life.
One of the biggest changes was realising that I didn't have to keep forcing myself into situations simply to prove that I could. Being more introverted wasn't something I needed to fix.
I became less critical of myself and more trusting of who I already was. The anxiety didn't have to disappear for my life to feel different.
This story is based on a client experience. Identifying details have been changed or removed to protect confidentiality.
Deciding whether to reach out
I came to counselling because I was struggling with whether to make contact with someone in my family after a long period of distance.
I kept going backwards and forwards. Part of me wanted to reach out, but another part was worried about what might happen if I did. I thought I needed someone to help me decide whether contacting them was the right thing to do.
Counselling gave me somewhere to slow the decision down. We talked about the relationship, what had happened, what I hoped might come from making contact and what I was afraid of. I began to understand that it wasn’t simply a question of whether I should send a message. There was much more underneath it.
Eventually, we worked together on a letter. Having the space to think about what I genuinely wanted to say — rather than what I thought I should say — helped me become clearer about what I wanted.
I chose to make contact.
The important part wasn’t being told what to do. It was reaching a point where the decision felt like mine.
This story is based on a client experience. Identifying details have been changed or removed to protect confidentiality.