About Steve Smith Counselling

- Helping you move forward with life: counselling and Mindfulness Based CBT in Balham SW17.
- I am an experienced and BACP accredited counsellor, offering confidential, empathetic counselling and Mindfulness Based CBT in Balham/Tooting SW17.
- The counselling rooms I work in are a couple of minutes walk from Tooting Bec Tube, 8 minutes from Balham Station.
- The counselling I offer combines Existential Counselling with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.

The issues I most commonly deal with include relationship issues, depression, anxiety, anger management, panic, impulsive behaviour, obsessive compulsive habits. Many people I work with feel they have reached a point where they are ’stuck’ and cannot see a way forward, feel overwhelmed by the emotions they are experiencing, or are struggling with conflicting feelings.

Existential Counselling might sound a little heavy, but its goals are very simple: to help strengthen a sense of purpose, meaning and control in life and to clarify how the the things we take for granted about ourselves and about life may be limiting us; sometimes it can be very useful in spotting how we are avoid taking responsibility for our part in situations, or take on responsibility for things that are not our responsibility. This can be particularly relevant in sorting out relationship problems.

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy works by helping you identify your default responses to situations and showing you how you can modify them if they are causing problems. This will involve cultivating an awareness of your thoughts and emotions and developing an ability to make different choices how you react to those thoughts and feelings.

Both these approaches are, at heart, about taking control of the way you react to what life brings you rather than walking through it on automatic pilot. They show us that we can have freedom to choose how we respond to thoughts and feelings that initially might seem overwhelming.

I have worked for various counselling organisations and within the NHS and offer Existential Counselling and CBT in a relaxed, safe setting. I also use Mindfulness based techniques and offer an introduction to the basic concepts of Mindfulness as a complement to other approaches. For more information have a look at my website.

About Counselling
- Counselling gives you the opportunity to talk about your thoughts and feelings and in doing so find solutions to problems or dilemmas you feel comfortable with.
- Many people find that just having the chance to speak freely with somebody who is not personally involved and isn’t going to make judgements or give opinions is very helpful.
- Working together with a trained counsellor allows you to look at your life in ways you may not have considered before and to gain insight and understanding.
- Exploring the assumptions you have about yourself and about life may reveal how they are holding you back and lead you to reassess or challenge those assumptions.
- To some extent the terms "counselling" and "psychotherapy" are interchangeable. ’Psychotherapy’ sometimes implies that the therapy will be longer term and some practitioners also use the term to indicate a higher level of academic therapy training. It is not necessarily the case that someone who describes themself as a psychotherapist will be more highly qualified or more experienced than someone who uses the the term counsellor.

Confidentiality
- Anything said in the counselling room is completely confidential. The only exception to this is if a client seems to be at immediate risk of harming themselves or others. Any disclosure would be discussed with the client first.

My training, work experience and any achievement

- Steve Smith is an experienced and qualified counsellor who has worked for a number of counselling services in London, within the NHS and was until recently Project Leader of a counselling service in south London.
- Before training as a Counsellor he worked in the media industry for 20 years. Steve holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy and holds BACP accreditation.
- He is registered with UKRCP the and a member of The Society for Existential Analysis.
- He has regular supervision of his work with his clients.
- Accredited Member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy working within their Code of Ethics and Practice.
- Registered provider with Pru Health and Aviva
- PG Dip Existential Psychotherapy & Counselling, 2006;
- Fundamentals Psychosynthesis 2002
- MA 1979

Further Information

- I charge £20 for an inital session; after that the fees are £50 for weekday sessions and £55 for sessions on a Saturday morning, when available.
- A limited number of concessionary places are available for counselling students or those on a low income.